The Evolution of Agitating Lance
by ChristineBH
Summary: (series of one-shots) Lance and Keith has often butted heads. It is mostly Lance starting arguments and competitions but Keith isn't innocent either and have been agitating Lance from the day they first talked to each other. A multi-chapter story about insults, faked obliviousness, and sometimes actually being oblivious in the never ending quest of how much Keith can agitate Lance.
1. The Foundation of Teasing

Lance remembered even if Keith didn't the first time they really talked to each other. It had been months into their Garrison carriers and Lance had already set himself to be Keith's rival even though they hadn't interacted with each other other than the few times they walked in opposite directions in the hallway and Keith acknowledged Lance's existence enough to take a step to the side as Lance did the same so they wouldn't collide. Just like he did with every other cadet he saw.

This day however Keith was actually looking and talking to Lance. First to tell Lance to shut up when Lance reached the fourth minute of loudly talking at his classmates who who like they were in a faraway world. Lance, of course, wouldn't stop talking without a fight but soon found out that may have been better that day.

"Excuse you; I'm the best pilot in my class."

"Really?" Keith asked but had clearly already decided he didn't believe Lance.

"Yeah, you should know that already." Lance almost looked sincerely concerned for Keith not knowing. Or maybe he was actually concerned and trying to hide it very badly.

Keith thought for a moment. He didn't interact with or note many things about his classmates, but he knew he was the best his class and that the second best was defiantly redheaded and far fairer than this idiot. Not to mention that she was female. Keith looked at the boy again and came to a relation.

"You're a cargo pilot." Keith had almost forgotten that the fighter and cargo pilots shared most classes.

"And the best one you will ever see."

"The best cargo pilot. You must be so proud," Keith said looking unimpressed.

"Of course I'm proud. I'm the best in my class."

Keith widened his eyes. "Yeah, you're right. That must be almost as good as being the least soggy piece of bread."

* * *

"You're outta this world, and I would know."

It was months into their time as paladins of Voltron and Lance was flirting with an alien. Which wasn't unusual, but this one looked quite male with its tall and gray frame, wide shoulders and rough but symmetrical face. Not that Keith was an expert in alien biology. It only lasted a couple of distressingly painful minutes before the alien realized Lance was flirting and turned away from him so the alien could sprint away with a shocked and disturbed expression.

Lance looked disappointed for a second before be noticed Keith staring after the running alien, but was interrupted by Keith right before he could say something.

"Wasn't that a man?"

"You have a problem with that, _Keith_? Are you against same sex attractions or something?"

Keith finally stopped looking after the vanished alien. "Why would it even matter who you like. No one is going to like you back anyway."

Lance stood with wide eyes and kept closing and opening his mouth. It was an amusing sight and Keith barely managed to suppress his amusement.

* * *

Lance would most of the time be the one teasing Keith, sometimes with little success and sometimes he was so successful that he was lucky that the others could keep Keith from killing Lance in cold-blooded murder.

Keith never knew when the teasing would take place, he doubted Lance even knew before he started it, but he generally was ready for anything as soon as he saw Lance's dumb face.

"¡Hola, Keith! ¿Bueno pues?" Lance shouted as he entered the dining room where Keith was almost done with his post workout meal.

"Um, hi Lance," Keith answered, confused why Lance needed to shout and why he needed to say hi and something else in Spanish.

"¿Hablas español? Lo hago porque soy inteligente." Lance asked with big eyes in fake curiosity. Lance was probably mocking or insulting him. Keith knew very little Spanish but Lance said something about being smart, and Keith was 80% sure that meant he was saying something about Keith being dumb.

"Can't you find someone else to bother?" Keith asked and hoped he sounded just irritated enough for Lance to leave but not irritated enough that Lance would find annoying him fun.

"Oh, sorry, I will have to speak your language then? Your _only_ language, but I guess not everyone can be smart enough to speak more than one." Lance talked as if he was some aristocrat and Keith was just waiting to be called a peasant.

"Languages have nothing to do with intelligence," Keith grumbled even though he knew it might have been a small lie. He sure was impressed heard about the teenager that had learned 20 languages in 4 years when he was still on Earth, so there had to be something about intelligence and languages.

"So you don't speak anything else than old, boring English?" Lance walked over and stood behind the chair next to Keith.

It hurt his neck to turn it so far, but he wasn't about to turn away from Lance. "Of course I do. I'm just stating it's no big deal since idiots like you can do it."

"Really? But no te creo," Lance said with fake sympathy. Whatever he said, it was probably to rile Keith up and he wasn't going to let him have that satisfaction. He was legally an adult and he was going to take the highway and not act childish. Don't give him what he wants, Keith, he reminded himself, one shouldn't argue about knowing other languages when one only remember some of the words Shiro taught him.

"Nūdorubouru!" Keith yelled like he was shouting 'fuck you' at himself for biting into Lance's bait.

Lance looked surprised that another language than English was coming out of Keith's mouth. Good thing Japanese wasn't as commonly known in North America as Spanish was because Keith was sure he wasn't even pronouncing it right and he had no idea if what he was saying made any sense. Shiro would be horrified to hear Keith butcher the language.

"¡No sé lo que dices pero te odio!" Lance shouted.

"Uma, neko, inu!" Keith shouted back and had a vague idea of the animals he was naming.

"¡Coño!"

"Hansamu!" Keith belated realized it sounded too much like its English meaning but he was already red from anger so at least he didn't have to worry about Lance finding out that he was blushing.

"¡Eres palestino!"

Keith stood up and looked Lance in the face as he tried to make his gibberish intimidating as he spoke in a low voice. "Kabe, hyō." Keith heard how cutesy it sounded and it was solely determination that stopped his expression from wavering.

Lance lost some of his fire. "Siempre me haces sentir como un jodido idiota y odio que te amo." Keith was _not_ an emo tea or whatever that last part meant, but he was lacking Japanese words and the creativity to invent some to shout at Lance. Therefore, he would just have to shout the last few he knew and leave.

"Ko, hyō, otōsan, inu!" Keith shouted and hoped Lance didn't notice some of the words had been used before.

Lance was about to say something more but Keith couldn't let him because he really didn't have any other words to say and Lance clearly knew the Spanish language well. Keith left his bowl of almost finished goo but Lance could wash it and deserved it for being a Spanish-speaking showoff who didn't deserve to have the last word.

Shiro was leaning up the wall as Keith walked past him and followed him down the hall.

"That was very entertaining," Shiro said, sounding more light-hearted than Keith had heard him in a long time.

Keith hummed broodingly and Shiro fortunately took that as an appropriate reply.

"I feel like you two weren't really listening to each other." Shiro shook his head a bit. "And you both had such valid points too."

Oh right, Shiro was picking on Keith but the only thing Keith think was that he had forgotten that Shiro was decent at Spanish. Maybe even close to how good he was at Japanese. How could Keith forget that there wasn't much Shiro couldn't do?

"You could tell me if Lance said anything interesting."

"Sure," Shiro said cheerfully but Keith recognized the evil in Shiro that was coming to the surface. "But then I would also have to tell Lance how articulate you really are, Keith."

Keith huffed in reply and looked away from Shiro, and how could Keith forget that under that leader façade was an evil and childish man hiding, who would like nothing else than telling Lance how Keith was really just naming random words instead of insults?

* * *

Shiro walked up next to Keith and looked at Lance freaking out to Hunk.

 _"_ _and then he just hit me because he thought I wanted to fight, Hunk!"_ Lance was yelling distressingly on the other side of the training deck.

"Why are you acting like you don't know what a high five is?"

Keith glanced at the man next to him.

"It's funny." He shrugged.

Shiro sighed disappointed but Keith could see a stifled smile when he took another glance.

"Just don't overdo it. I don't think Lance can take much more."

"You know me, Shiro."

"That's why I'm worried."

Keith smiled and an evil glint shone like a star in his eyes.

* * *

"Okay, Keith, Buddy, one more time. I say 'Vol', you say 'tron'. Vol-"

Keith was quiet until he couldn't take Lance's hopeful expression any longer. "Voltron."

"No!" Lance shouted. "How are you not getting this? The instruction is _still_ in the chant!" Lance clawed at his hair and Keith started feeling just slightly badly about teasing Lance. The first time he had tried to teach the chant to Keith, Keith had been genuinely confused about what he was expected to do, but the other times had been completely on purpose.

"You said it differently last time."

"What, I literally say the same thing word for word every time I try this with you."

"No the part after I said 'Voltron'. You said it differently." Keith was starting to curse his soft heart. Now Lance would probably explain it so thoroughly that Keith couldn't play it off without seeming too dumb.

"That's not a part of the chant. The only parts is me telling you what to do and then us saying Voltron." Keith opened his mouth but Lance quickened his speech before Keith had a chance to interrupt. "Together! We say Voltron together. As in I say the first half and you say the second one."

Should Keith nod now to show he wasn't completely stupid and understood or could he still turn this around so he could use it to agitate Lance again? After all, there were only so many things he could seem oblivious about, so every little thing mattered.

"Do you get it now?" Lance somehow managed to both look hopeful and heartbroken at the same time, before he sighed dejectedly. "Or should I get Shiro to explain it better?"

Curse his soft heart. Curse it all. "No, I think I got it now."

"Really?" Lance said in a slightly higher pitch than normally and actually put his hands together and folded in on himself a bit so he could look up at Keith instead of the other way around.

"Yes, you explained it much better now."

Lance's smile blossomed brighter than any sun or crystal Keith had seen and maybe it was worth it to give this one thing up.

Lance straightened and replaced his bright smile with his more usual cocky expression. "Of course, it was great. You shouldn't expect anything less from the Lance-man."

Okay forget it. It wasn't worth it at all but it probably too late to back off now.

"Okay, okay. I say 'Vol' and you say 'tron'. Vol-"

Should he destroy Lance's dream of getting a chant? He could still do it. Keith looked at Lance's encouraging smile as Lance looked down the inch or two between them. Keith mentally sighed. Saving the Universe was making Keith too weak.

"-tron…"

Lance threw his arms up in the air and smiled even brighter than his earlier sun-weakening smile. He took a couple of loud breaths looking searching at Keith's face before he threw his arms around Keith and tightened his grip until it was almost painful.

"You did it, Keith. You actually did it." Keith stood rigid for a few of Lance's excited breaths before he hesitantly put his stiff arms around Lance.

On one hand, he could never go back to not knowing how Lance's chant went without even someone as thick as Lance finding out that Keith was faking it, but on the other hand, he felt appreciated and like Lance was proud of him. Like he had done something to be proud of.

Feelings were so complicated.

* * *

"This" Lance said seriously, as he held a spoonful of purple goo up for them all to see. "Is the shit."

"Aww, thank you, man," Hunk said earnestly. He had seemed nervous at the start of the meal if the others would like the changed goo.

Should Keith have fun with this? He looked over at Hunk's happy face and decided not to. Hunk was great and Keith didn't want to be the one to ruin his moment of glory.

The others were happy too, except Coran who seemed to like the food but was miffed that the others seemed to like Hunk's experimental food and not Coran's food. Keith felt a bit badly about not enjoying the food, Coran presented when they started their Paladin carriers but it had been rather nauseating.

Keith decided that Coran would get over it soon and happily take care of the castle or whatever Coran did when Keith wasn't looking. Talking to the princess maybe? Could be, but he didn't think they had much to talk about that wouldn't make them sad. Lance seemed closer to Coran than the others were so maybe they were reminiscing about Earth and Altea together or comparing the planets to each other.

Keith was most of the time in a conversation at the dinner table with the others, but he didn't understand how some of them could be in two conversations simultaneously. He could barely keep up with his one conversation with Pidge about Commander Iverson. Apparently, he was the exact same back when Keith had him as a teacher as he was when Pidge joined the school.

"That tasted like shit," Lance exclaimed so loudly that all other conversation stopped.

"That wasn't very nice," Pidge said like the hypocrite she was. Keith liked her but even Keith was occasionally surprised about how… honest she was about her feelings. Pidge would probably tell a new mother that her baby was ugly without feeling any guilt. Okay, maybe Keith could admit he made her sound worse than she was, but she defiantly wouldn't keep quiet about not liking the food.

"I thought you liked it, Lance," Hunk told Lance. He looked so pitiful that Keith got that weird protective feeling he got when he saw an underweight kitten meowing in a cardboard box when he was 12.

"No, Hunk, I didn't mean _this_ food. I meant the green food from that celebration banquet."

"Oh, the one with the-"

"Yes exactly!"

"Yeah, that was nasty," Hunk agreed.

Keith had never actively tried to make a connection with anyone before all of them were brought to Allura and Coran, but he found himself just a little bit envious about the bond Hunk and Lance had. He envied Pidge's bond with them too but to a lesser degree. The bond was depending on how long they had known each other, Keith concluding internally.

"Why would you even eat the green food? It looked so gross!" Pidge asked and showed Keith that his inner monologue about her honesty hadn't been completely misguided.

"You were just too chicken to try it. Everyone else got a taste," Lance teased.

Pidge wrinkled her nose. "Who would I try something that made even Coran green?"

"Keith drank nunvil after he saw Lance vomiting after drinking it," Hunk informed her.

Touché, Hunk, Keith thought but wasn't overly bothered by his words.

Allura seemed to take the switch of conversation less well and put down her spork even though she was only half done with her bowl before she delicately cleaned her already clean mouth with her napkin and put it on her bowl so she couldn't see the contents in the bowl. And here Keith was, thinking the princess was tough and she couldn't even take a bit of puke talk.

"What did you eat then, Pidge?" Lance in a way Keith couldn't determine if it was amused or irritated.

"There was some delicious looking buns," Pidge answered with her nose pointed up to the ceiling.

"Oh, I didn't get to taste them," Hunk said excitedly and Keith couldn't get the imagine of Pidge stealing the food out of his head. "How were they?"

"The worst thing I've ever tasted."

"Really, the worst?" Keith asked surprised. The buns had had a funny taste but it had been far from the most horrible thing he had tasted. Different taste buds then or maybe Pidge was just too smart to taste all the horrible things Keith had put in his mouth so the buns really were the worst thing she had ever tasted.

"No, not really. It was not entirely bad, but not something I would hunt down again."

That made more sense and Keith nodded a bit before asking, "But then why did you say it was the worst thing you've ever tasted?"

"Does everything have to be literal with you, Keith!?" Lance interrupted annoyed. It was irritating that the times Keith wasn't acting blank to annoy Lance was the times he became most annoyed with Keith.

"I always talk literally, Lance."

"I forgot, we can't speak like normal human beings," Lance paused, as he glanced at Coran and Allura before continuing, "and other just as civilized beings when you're at the table."

"I think the buns tasted like dick," Keith answered unfeelingly when he decided that he could get the best of this since the moment was already ruined for Hunk.

The others looked at Keith with either big eyes and raised eyebrows or furrowed eyebrows and squinting eyes, except Lance who seemed completely frozen safe for the red entering his cheeks and the high-pitched choking noise he let out.

Pidge cleared her throat. "Keith, you meant that figuratively speaking, right?"

"No," Keith answered, as he looked her in the eyes with a deadpanned expression. "I meant it tasted like a literal cock."

"Heh, this is a joke, right? Haha, you made a joke, Keith. It is one, right? Because how would you…?" Hunk asked but Keith was sure he knew the answer already so Keith simply let his eyes wander over to Hunk and smiled a crooked smile. This was so funny.

He looked over at Shiro who looked like his life was flashing in front of his eyes and the smile morphed into big, proper smile. As Allura excused herself from the table in a far more hurried manner than she normally did.

* * *

 _I know the Japanese makes little sense. That was on purpose because Keith kind of sucks at it even though he remembers a good number of words. The Spanish on the other hand, should make sense, because my Spanish teacher will probably hit me with a ruler if I got nothing out of the 3 years I was taught. Even if I will excuse it with me trying to use the few Cuban words that I found that fit into their conversation (such as coño) However, please correct the Spanish or English for that matter if there's anything wrong with it._

 _Here's the translations:_

 _Spanish: ¡Hola, Keith! ¿Bueno pues? = Hello, Keith! What's up?_

 _Spanish: ¿Hablas español? Lo hago porque soy inteligente = Do you speak Spanish? I do because I'm intelligent._

 _Spanish (and English): Really? But no te creo = Really? But I don't believe you_

 _Japanese: Nūdorubouru = bowl of noodles_

 _Spanish: No sé lo que dices pero te odio = I don't know what you're saying but I hate you_

 _Japanese: Uma, neko, inu!= Horse, cat, dog!_

 _Spanish:_ _¡Coño! = Bastard_

 _Japanese: Hansamu! = Handsome!_

 _Spanish: ¡Eres palestino!= You are stupid/retarded_

 _Japanese: Kabe, hyō = wall, table_

 _Spanish: Siempre me haces sentir como un jodido idiota y odio que te amo. = You always m_ _akes me feel like a fucking idiot and I hate that I love you_

 _Japanese: Ko, hyō, otōsan, inu!= Child, table, father, dog!_


	2. The Basic Bitch and The Slimy Rejection

Keith was walking to his room when he saw Hunk and Lance talking excitedly about something and Pidge looked like she would rather tinker with something or die than hear more of their talking.

On one hand, he could go away and not risk falling victim to their stupid conversation like Pidge had but on the other hand, he could do what he damn well pleased and not be bothered by them. Oh yeah, and save Pidge before she kills herself with a screwdriver.

He walked closer to them and heard the name 'Brangelina'. Now, Keith had never had an interest in celebrities but he knew the basics from not being completely able to avoid hearing the girls he shared foster families with throughout the years, but the others, mostly Lance, didn't need to know that.

"What the hell is a 'Brandelina'?" He interrupted their excited conversation.

"It's 'Brangelina', and it's the ship name for –" Hunk started before Keith interrupted again.

"What's a ship?" He asked and tilted his head a bit to the left. Lance looked like it physically hurt him and Hunk just looked sad for Keith. Keith watched Pidge in the corner of his eye looking like she knew something. She probably did.

"It's a name for two people that's in a relationship or" Hunk looked coyly away "people think should be in a relationship."

Huh, Keith thought, it looked like someone knew a lot about shipping people he thought should be together.

"Now you know. So scram" Lance said and waved his hands in Keith's direction.

"Oh, I think I know what Brangelina is now," Keith said still looking innocently at Hunk and Lance while he felt Pidge looking intensely at him.

"You do? That's great, so you know it's-, "Hunk said enthusiastically.

"Yeah, I know," Keith interrupted again and promised himself he would stop interrupting Hunk soon. "It's the shipname for Brandon and Andrea, of course."

"What!? No," Lance said deeply outraged at Keith's claim.

"Who else could it be?" Keith asked and tilted his head a bit more. "I guess I can see why some would ship them. They were always such good friends and I think Andrea had a think for Brandon in the beginning. The names doesn't quite fit though. Shouldn't it have been Brandera instead? Or have I missed something? It's been so long so I don't really remember." Keith had never been so happy about being forced to watch TV with one of his foster sisters for almost a week when both of them caught the flu.

Lance and Hunk looked stunned at Keith and he became a little worried that they would never move again, when Pidge said something for the first time since Keith came into the hallway.

"You watched Beverly Hills?"

"90210, yes."

"You're a bigger basic bitch than Lance," She said with disbelieve.

"Hey!" Lance protested at that but it was for naught. Pidge and the rest of the crew had already made their decision on the matter.

"And you," Lance continued and pointed at Keith, "how can you insult both Brangelina and Beverly Hills?"

Way to not sound basic, Keith thought but let Lance rage out.

"What's wrong with you? You can't tell me you're that ignorant. I can't fucking believe you, and you just-" Lance said something more, a lot more actually, but Keith's work was done and Lance was just too entertaining to watch for Keith to be bothered by not hearing a single word he said.

* * *

Lance was brooding in the control bay. Usually Keith would just ignore and leave him alone. He had done just that over an hour ago but Lance was still brooding so Keith was curious as for why.

He walked over to Lance and saw his sullen expression. This looked serious so maybe he should just get someone else. Literally, anyone else would be better at comforting than Keith. However, as soon as he decided to leave, Lance laid his eyes on Keith.

Well shit, Keith thought.

"What do you want, Mullet?"

Keith really hoped Lance wouldn't keep this up because he was already bad at comforting anyone and it didn't help to be called names.

"Just curious why you're up here."

"Thinking."

Okay then, Keith thought, here he had the impression that he was the silent, one worded paladin, but it looked like he was wrong about that.

"Do you want me to leave?" Keith asked when he couldn't find any other words to say to Lance.

Lance sighed. "No, it's okay. I'm not thinking about anything important."

What did people say when they hear something like that? Oh, yeah. "No, it's important if it bothers you that much." Keith closed his eyes while he internally berated himself for sounding so unconvincing and saying the words in such a clumsy matter. Lance was looking at him with disbelieving eyes when Keith opened them again.

"That was the worst try at comfort I've ever heard."

Now Keith just felt bad. He had thought he was doing at least somewhat decent. He almost remembered the words correctly but it looked like he was far worse at it than he thought.

"But thank you, Keith."

Keith just nodded.

"Do you really want to know why I'm up here?"

Keith didn't know if it was the smartest move but he nodded anyway. Lance looked out the glass and Keith readied himself for whatever Lance had to say. Probably something about his family or maybe he was stressed and overwhelmed about the war. Keith could relate to being stressed and overwhelmed.

"I just can't believe I flirt so much but no one wants to flirt back."

Keith needed a moment to comprehend that he had heard Lance correctly. Was he _serious_? Keith studied his expression. He _was_ serious and Keith couldn't believe it.

Forget consolations, Lance needed some hard truths if he was really brooding for over an hour about his flirting.

"I think you're just really bad at flirting," Keith said and managed to only sound slightly irritated under his concern.

"Gee, thanks, man, that's exactly what I wanted to hear right now." Lance's sarcasm could practically drown both of them.

"Just stating the truth. You flirt all the time and still gets nowhere with anyone who aren't trying to steal your lion."

"We agreed to never talk about that again," Lance bit at Keith.

"I never agreed to anything. Besides big deal that you don't have any dates. You don't see the rest of us brooding about having no dates." Maybe Keith wasn't the best to say this as he could barely comprehend having friends and the constant anxiety that they would leave him was too consuming for him to worry about dating too but Lance didn't need to know that.

"What do you know about dates? You never seem to have an interest in anyone," Lance huffed.

Now, that was true. Keith had probably liked someone before, but the lines between really, really wanting to be friends with someone, admiring someone, or crushing on them was a bit blurry to Keith, and if he didn't have any crushes on earth it was probably because he tended to avoid almost all human contact. It hurt a lot less to leave or watch someone leave when you weren't close to them.

However, he again didn't feel like Lance needed to know that so he did his best confident expression and answered, "Maybe not now, but I didn't use all my time in the simulations at the Garrison." Which was the truth, he also used some time in the gym learning combat.

Lance was silent for a moment, "So you had lots of dates then?"

"Yes, of course" not, he added internally. "I was quite popular."

Lance widened his eyes. "You knew about that?"

"Yes," Keith lied. He hadn't know that, but Pidge had complained to him once that she had almost went insane after hearing about Keith since she started at the Garrison even though he got kicked out before she started. Everyone was apparently buzzing with gossip about him and according to one of Pidge's classmates he had been the topic just as often when he was still in the Garrison. Pidge told Keith that she thought they were right by calling him mysterious but she also expected him to be far more buff and look almost exactly like Shiro before she met him. That one had stung a bit but both of them had shortly after laughed over the stupid rumors Pidge could still remember about Keith. Like how the Garrison had to upgrade their simulation because Keith was better than the most difficult level when he started or how he wrestled a bear and won.

Lance looked weirdly vulnerable when he talked again. "So you went on dates with lots of different people?"

"That was implied but yes."

"What did you do on your dates?" Keith was just glad Lance wasn't asking about how he scored the dates, even if it was also implied that everyone apparently swooned over him.

"I would –" Keith thought for a moment. What was things people did on dates? "I-I mean we, as me and my date."

Lance nodded and, to Keith's surprise, didn't look annoyed that Keith couldn't find the right words.

"We would eat? And we would watch a-" Keith was about to say 'a movie' but there wasn't any cinemas close to the Garrison even if he and his 'date' could get out for a few hours. Find something you can watch at the Garrison, Keith thought. "the night sky!" Keith ended his disaster of a sentence a bit too enthusiastically.

"That sounds nice," Lance said. "But it doesn't sound like your kind of thing. I expected that you would be the type to train with your date or something."

Keith wouldn't lie to himself. Training all day with someone sounded glorious but he did like the quiet too.

"Yeah, but it has to be something you both like, you know." Keith could almost slap himself. Lance obviously didn't know and that was the reason he was brooding.

"Of course," Lance said quietly before looking up at the stars again. Keith looked up too and found that he enjoyed just sitting and watching space with Lance's warmth beside him.

Lance took a deep breath before breaking the silence, "What is," Lance seemed to stop himself. "I mean what was your perfect date?" Keith found that an odd question to ask. Not off topic or anything but he couldn't help but feel like Lance wanted something else out of that question than what Keith initially thought.

Keith had no idea about perfect dates. Well, he just had to say something he enjoyed that wasn't beating something or someone. Anything. "I enjoyed the time where I-" He thought for a moment more, "I took my date out and we-" Put yourself together, Keith, he thought, this was already the sentence with the most pauses in history "we drove around on my hoverbike."

That was probably not even possible while attending the Garrison, and Keith was ready for Lance to point that out when Lance just sighed.

"That sounds fun. Did you do that often?"

Lance sounded sincerely curious and something else, but Keith felt like that was a trick question so Lance could laugh at him for trying to convince Lance that Keith had dates.

"No, not a lot." Keith could leave it at that but he felt like he needed to say a reason. "My date didn't like it very much." Which was just stupid. Who didn't like hovercrafts? And Garrison people should like fast things. God, he missed that machine.

"Stupid date," Lance said. He sounded yearning. Wow, he really wanted a date. Maybe Keith shouldn't have insulted him if a date meant so much to him.

"Though, I still can't believe _you_ have gotten more than one date," Lance sneered. Okay, Keith thought, maybe he hadn't insulted Lance enough. Lance just had to ruin every bonding moment between them.

"And you've gotten none. Isn't that something?"

"I hope you were nicer to your dates because right now it doesn't look like anyone liked you for your personality."

"I could say the same thing about you!" Keith gave back.

"Is it too late to say yes to you leaving? I can't believe I thought you could understand anything remotely emotional."

Maybe Keith wasn't great at other people's emotions, but he was trying and honestly felt like that had to count for something. "Okay, I will leave you alone to cry about how alone you are."

"Fine!"

"Good!"

This felt a lot more malicious than their fights usually did.

* * *

"I've never seen a black planet before," Hunk wondered out loud as they passed Vobreonus. Vobreonus was actually dark blue, but it almost looked black and was very hard to spot if you didn't know where to look.

"Yeah, it's strange. It's like a void," Lance agreed.

"Like my soul," Keith said. Everyone but Pidge took a step back at his deadpanned tone.

"Huh, same," She answered and gave Keith an approving nod.

"Are you guys okay?" Lance asked with wide eyes.

Pidge and Keith looked at each other and shrugged at Lance.

* * *

"I would love to get to know you and I'm not lion," Lance said in an attempt to be charming. Keith waited for the alien girl to do something. All between a frightened scream and a polite decline was expected, but she started to giggle over the pun. It sounded oddly human for a navy blue, slime thing, even if she was shaped like a slim human girl, and Keith didn't know what to think.

"Do you think she wants a lion too?" Hunk asked quietly. Yeah, probably that.

"I don't know. Do you think so?" Hunk had after all known the last time so if Hunk said the word Keith would help him prevent another incident.

"I don't know. They don't seem underhanded like Rolo and Nyma did but it is a little suspicious that she responds like that. Not that I don't think Lance can flirt or are unappealing. I'm not attracted to him but he's a great guy I can see why someone would like him, and –"

Hunk didn't get to say any more. Keith knew Hunk could ramble and he simply didn't have the patience to hear it all. "I know what you mean, Hunk. We will just keep an eye on them."

"Yeah, good idea, Keith."

And so they did. Allura and Shiro didn't seem to like that Lance was sweet-talking someone but the alien didn't seem to dislike it and it kept Lance occupied while they talked to the leader. Hunk eventually left Keith and went over to Allura and Shiro to be diplomatic with them. Minutes passed and Keith was about to see if he could see where Pidge was hiding and probably studying some tech when she arrived at his side. Either she had seen what she wanted quicker than expected or the slime aliens simply didn't have much tech.

"Did they take all the stars and put them in your eyes?" Lance asked with yet another space related pickup line. Keith had no idea where he got all of them. Pidge and Keith just groaned but kept looking at their friend. There was nothing better to do. They had to stay until Allura and Shiro deemed the alliance solidified instead of hiding in the castle with Coran like at least Keith wanted to.

"Excuse me," asked a slime alien next to Keith and Pidge.

Both Keith and Pidge gave her their attention.

"I can't help but notice that you're looking at my sister and the Blue Paladin." Sister? She did resemble the other alien a lot. The only mayor difference was that she was of a lighter color.

"We're just observing our teammate," Keith answered.

"Oh, why though? I hope I'm not being rude but I know my sister wouldn't do anything to be concerned about to him." She looked worried. Keith didn't know if it was because she was convinced they had a bone to pick with her sister or because she was afraid she was being rude.

"Not at all, we are observing both of them, but don't worry," Pidge reassured the girl. Keith was sure Pidge was about to say they were more afraid of what Lance would do but then he realized Pidge probably knew that wouldn't be a great thing to say to future allies.

"Why?" She asked puzzled but then got a startled look, "Unless he's one of your species young he should be able to take care of himself. I just assumed he was an adult but I know nothing of your species."

Should he? He looked over at Pidge and she looked like she was on board with it so he took a chance. "Yes, he's quite young. Our youngest."

Pidge jumped in, "He's a great fighter but he sometimes bites off more than he can chew when talking to girls."

"Bite? Chew? No, I don't even want to know how you mate. But will you please tell me how I can know the characteristics of your young so I can make sure we won't mistake one again?"

Pidge and Keith looked at each other.

"You can see it in the…" Pidge started but quickly gave Keith a look for help.

"Eye color," Keith rushed out in an attempt to shorten the pause and therefore make it less awkward and believable.

"Eye color," The alien parroted.

"Yes, they start at blue and gets darker with age," He continued.

"Oh, of course I should have known when I saw your leader's dark eyes. Please excuse my foolishness, paladins." She looked down at her feet as she gave them a small bow with her head.

"You couldn't have known," Pidge reassured and thereafter gave Keith a look. "It's quite unique."

Well, quiznak you, Pidge, Keith thought. He would have liked to see her find something better to say in a literal second.

Keith quickly swallowed his bitterness over being blamed and instead gave Pidge a small, embarrassed smile that he quickly hid again before the slime alien ended her bow.

She looked at them for a moment before she opened her mouth again and shyly said, "But there's something I don't understand."

"What is it?" Pidge asked politely.

"I can see you must be the second youngest, Green Paladin, but you are the shortest."

"I will grow. Lance is tall for his age."

"Of course, but how come you, Red Paladin, are so short then? Your eyes are quite dark so you should be about as old as the Black and Yellow Paladin."

Keith closed his eyes for a moment and the alien quickly started apologizing for her rudeness. Pidge reassured her she wasn't being rude. Good, because Keith would have told her just how rude she was if he had opened his mouth.

"It's so sad when growths are stunned," The alien said in a sad tone when she finally accepted Pidge's reassurances.

"Yes, quite," Pidge agreed magnanimously. That little traitor. Keith was the second shortest but he wasn't even that much shorter than the others unlike Pidge.

He looked over at Lance who looked like he was succeeding even further in his flirtations.

"Can I ask you a favor?" Keith asked.

"Yes of course," The alien exclaimed. She was clearly excited to be able to make amends with Keith for basically calling him a dwarf.

"Can you inform your sister of our young friend?" The alien looked confused for a moment before realization painted her face.

"Yes, of course!" She yelled before leaving in a rapid pace.

"That was fun," Pidge said quietly.

"Yeah, for you," Keith muttered.

"Come on, Keith, the show is about to start."

Keith kept quiet because she was right and it was a show worth keeping quiet for. The lighter blue alien barely told her sister five words before the darker blue alien threw Lance's arms away from her and looked horrified at her sister and Lance before leaving. Maybe to hide her shame, maybe to apologize to Shiro and Allura. Keith felt a stone in his chest. He hoped she wouldn't say anything to anyone from the team. Shiro would be so mad.

He would probably look like Lance did as he stomped towards Pidge and Keith.

"What is your problem!?" He yelled at both of them

"Nothing, what's wrong?" Pidge asked innocently. Maybe a bit too innocently but beggars can't be choosers and Keith couldn't do it better himself.

"I had her and you two ruined it. I don't know how but you did!"

Lance would probably be scary if it wasn't so funny to see him so cross.


	3. The Dirty Desert Dweller and The FBC

_Full title (because it was apparently too long): **The Dirty Desert Dweller and The Fearsome Beauty Care**_

* * *

Keith was for relaxing in the lounge with Pidge. She was studying Altean and Keith was laying in the couch, enjoying the quiet. It was almost like being back in the desert if he closed his eyes. Then Lance came loudly through the door. So much for that peace and quiet.

"Hey Pidge, I just realized that you're just like that brown-haired girl from that anime about the host club!" Keith had no idea what Lance was talking about, and even less of one whether Lance expected them to know what kind of Japanese hentai he was referring to. "Oh, oh, and Mulan!"

Keith looked at both of them and quickly hid his amusement over Pidge's displeased look at the comparisons. She looked over at Keith but she could go down for all he cared. That what she deserved for agreeing with an alien that he was short. Besides there was worse things to be compared to than Mulan, one of the only Disney princesses Keith liked. Pidge changed her look to pleading and Keith was a little amazed Lance didn't notice it through his speech about Mulan, Pidge and a bit about the crossdressing anime host girl. He mainly talked about the cutting hair and dressing like a boy part but he had surprisingly much 'evidence' for why Pidge was a mixture between those two cartoon girls.

Keith sighed almost completely inaudible and sat up. This space war was really making him too weak. Or making Pidge too strong.

"Who's this 'Mulan'?"

"Dude, you've never watched Mulan? Isn't that like mandatory or something?"

"That's really racist, Lance," Keith said and only had to fake his offended voice a tiny bit. It was racist to think Keith had to watch it just because he was part East Asian so most of his offended tone was real.

Lance furrowed his eyebrows. "What?" Then they suddenly rose and his eyes widened as if they were trying to catch the eyebrows. "No! I meant as a child born after Disney took over the world."

"Sure…"

"No, I mean it. I don't even know what you are; besides I'm Cuban so it's not like I can judge too much for whatever you are." Lance looked at Pidge. "Not that only white people can be racist."

Lance really needed to spit that foot in his mouth out soon because it was slowly but steadily turning form amusing to plain painful to look at.

* * *

"No, Keith, you can't touch."

"You can't decide what I do, Lance."

"I can if it's mine."

"I don't think she appreciate that you call her a thing," Keith retorted a bit childishly.

"She knows I didn't mean it like that!" Lance looked at the reason for his and Keith's disagreement. "Isn't that right?"

"Shiro would let me touch his," Keith muttered.

"Well, then you know who to go to."

There was no answer and Keith snorted before touching without Lance's permission.

It was hard under his fingers. He had only ever touched his own but he had never thought about how the others' felt. However, it made sense that it would feel the same, being that it was made of the same materials and all that.

"Now I will have to clean her again because of your dirty hands!"

"She looks like she likes it." Which wasn't completely true. Lance's lion looked the same as always but she hadn't blasted him yet so she must have at least tolerated Keith touching her.

* * *

Keith sat in the lounge alone. He looked at an Altean scissor. Coran and Allura had called it something else but it looked like a scissor, so that was what he was calling it in his head.

He opened the scissor and carefully felt it. It was sharp and could easily be used as a weapon or whatever Alteans used scissors to do. Keith didn't even know they had scissors before that day. It seemed so strange but he shouldn't have been so surprised since two knives bolted together wasn't a complicated design but still so strange that he didn't completely understand how humans and Alteans came up with it independently of each other.

Steps walked towards him but he paid it no mind as he studied the scissor.

"You're not going to use that to cut your nails, are you?" Lance asked. Keith looked up at Lance saw he had wrinkled his nose.

Keith hadn't planned so do so but he saw an opportunity to annoy Lance. "Of course I am."

Keith waited a bit for Lance to leave but he just kept staring. Quiznak, Keith had hoped he could have bullshitted his way out of actually doing anything with the scissor.

Oh, well, too late to turn back now. Keith moved the scissor to his nails. They were actually getting a bit long now that he looked at them, and proceeded to cut them. Badly. Really, really badly. Keith wished he could have said it was because he wanted to agitate Lance with how badly it was done, but it really was because even a desert dweller, as Lance had once called him, typically used a nailclipper.

Lance sighed dejectedly. "You're impossible. Just let me do it."

Keith looked up at Lance confused as he sat next to him. Lance didn't wait for permission and pulled a nail clipper and nail file out of his jacket. Why did he have a nail clipper and file in his jacket? Keith was very confused but then remembered for Lance to even have it in the castle, it would mean he had had to have it on him when they was taken from Earth, and when Keith though about it like that it made sense why Lance had it on him now.

Keith had still not answered or even hinted at allowing Lance to cut and file his nails but Lance took one of Keith's hands anyway and started clipping and filling.

Keith didn't try to pull his hand back or otherwise resist Lance's sudden interest in his nails. He looked up from his nails and looked at Lance's face. Lance looked like he was being forced at gunpoint even though it had been his own choice.

Keith barely noticed when Lance let the first hand go and took a hold of the next one and before he knew it they were both done. Lance would probably never hear it from him but Keith's nails were beautiful. Never had they looked so good before. All that only because of well done nail clipping and filling.

"Thanks, Lance," Keith let out hesitantly. He was grateful but still very confused why Lance would care how Keith's nails looked. He was also unsure if Lance wanted Keith to say something about the nails or just forget about it.

Lance didn't answer but he also didn't leave so maybe he wanted Keith to say something more. Keith thought about what to say for a millisecond before he saw that Lance already looked flustered from Keith's poor 'thank you' so he decided that he couldn't say something too nice.

"I knew you use face masks but I didn't know you were the kind of guy to carry a nail file around," he continued.

"Seriously, Keith," Lance said as if Keith had done something truly outrageous. "Stop thinking hygienic stuff is strictly feminine and file your damn nails."

Keith was about to do something to indicate Lance had a point, not say it out loud though, when Lance exhaled loudly and left the room in a huff.

* * *

They were almost all on the training deck ready fight the training robots together to bond and train but they couldn't start before Pidge would finally show up.

Keith was looking at Lance who was fidgety and it was oddly fascinating to look at.

"Could you stop staring?" Lance muttered at Keith while looking at his restless hands.

"Is it supposed to look like that?"

"What?" He looked at Keith.

'Quick, what is something Lance cares about?' Keith asked himself.

"Your pores."

"What!" Lance yelled with outrage and started blindly probing his face.

* * *

Hunk, Pidge, or Lance had somehow found a lamp somewhere. It looked like it was from Earth, maybe it was. Keith wasn't sure. The space mall had had a cow and a game console so it wasn't any stretch to think someone had taken or bought a lamp from Earth. The thing was that Hunk, Pidge, Lance, and maybe even Shiro _loved_ the lamp so they looked at it every day sometimes for an entire hour in silence before it was turned off again. Which was fine. Keith found it a little odd but he could live with them looking at a lamp. If it wasn't in its residence close to the door in the kitchen it was in front of someone in the dining hall, so it was never in the way either.

Keith even liked it well enough. He sometimes found himself a bit nostalgic but mostly he liked it because it was convenient. He would sometimes go to the kitchen for a snack when he gave up on sleeping and it would be there ready to be lit and it was not too bright for him after hours in the dark unlike the Altean lights were in the middle of the night.

The problem came when it stopped working. "It's the lightbulb" Lance theorized. Which was plausible but hard to fix in space lightyears away from Earth.

That was if one didn't have Hunk or Pidge to figure something out.

Hunk worked on making a new lightbulb while Pidge tried to fix the current one. That in itself caused the first fight Keith had ever seen between Hunk and Pidge. Hunk had stated that they couldn't risk Pidge changing the lightbulb in case Hunk would need another reference while Pidge argued that it would be faster and easier to fix the lightbulb and she wouldn't change anything about it so Hunk could get all the references he wanted. Lance and Keith had simply looked at them in stunned silence. Lance was split between his friendship to each and the sight of Pidge and Hunk fighting shocked Keith too much for him to say or do anything.

Pidge sulked when Hunk succeeded in making a working light bulb before Pidge could find anything wrong with the original one but she was happy that the lamp worked once more. That was until just a few days later where it again didn't work.

Keith walked into the kitchen when he heard commotion and saw Pidge and Hunk argue again. At first, he was stunned. He hadn't gotten used to the sight from their first fight, but he still got the gist of it. Pidge berated Hunk for building something that didn't work and Hunk wasn't having any of it.

Keith walked over to the lamp. It had worked fine the night before. He took the extra steps towards the light switch and pressed it. Didn't work. He walked back to the lamp and wondered why the switch had to be so far away from the lamp and door. He screwed the lightbulb two times and it lit up.

The others were still arguing and didn't notice that the lamp was lighting up before Lance noticed and caught their attention.

"The lamp!" Hunk exclaimed full of joy.

"Thank you, Keith," Lance sighed but Keith had a feeling he was more thankful for Pidge and Hunk not fighting than he was about the lamp.

"Sure," Keith mumbled and left.

Everyone was happy for a few days and the other teenagers on the ship upgraded their time with the lamp to hours of staring at it lit or unlit. Keith didn't understand why they wouldn't at least turn it on every time. It still worked when he used it at night so there couldn't be because of a problem with it. However, it could be for all kinds of reasons and even if it wasn't for any good one, it didn't really affect Keith so he let it go and went about his day. That was until the lamp forced Keith back to the kitchen a week and a half after Pidge's and Hunk's latest fight. He was starting to dislike the thing. This time however it was Lance and not the sound of Pidge and Hunk that told him he was needed in the kitchen.

"It's the lamp," Lance said breathless after having run around the castle.

Keith nodded and followed Lance. Lance tried his hardest to keep running but he was so tired that it became the kind of run which Keith could keep up with if he just walked a bit briskly.

Pidge and Hunk wasn't fighting this time but looking at the lamp together. They looked up simultaneously when Lance knocked on the doorframe.

"Keith, thank god," Hunk said. "Can you fix it again? We're completely lost here."

"Sure," Keith mumbled and sat down next to Hunk. Lance stood only for a second before he sat on the other side of Keith.

Keith was given the lamp and everyone looked at him with attentive eyes as he put the lamp in front of him and screwed the lightbulb and it lit up.

"Did you just-," Pidge started to say quietly but quickly continued in a sharper and louder tone, "did you just screw in the lightbulb!?"

"Yes?" Keith answered. It was obvious he had done that so he didn't understand why was she asking. Maybe she wondered how he knew what was wrong with it? "It was what I did last time too, so I just assumed it was the same thing again."

"Who is unscrewing the lightbulb?" Lance wondered loudly right into Keith's ear. "I didn't know anyone on the ship could be so mean!"

"It's not a big deal, just screw it in again. It's more convenient than going half the way back into the kitchen anyway."

Lance took a deep breath and put a hand on Keith's shoulder. "Are you implying that you're the one who keeps unscrewing the bulb?"

No, he hadn't been implying that but he wasn't about to deny doing it either. "Yes? What's wrong with that? You said we all could use it as long as we turned the thing off again."

Lance tightened his hold until it was painful. He was a lot stronger than Keith expected. Carrying around such a big gun must have put a lot of muscle on him.

"Was this some kind of joke to you?" Lance questioned and his eyes were blazing. Keith was actually a bit fearful. Not that he would ever tell Lance. "You could have told us when you "fixed" it the last time. No, you could have told us when Pidge and Hunk fought over lightbulbs the first time!"

"I thought you knew. It was really obvious."

"Was it?" Lance shook Keith's shoulder. "Was it really?"

Keith's heart sped up and his palms began to sweat. He must have been more afraid than he thought. "Yes, after pressing the switch it would be the first thing you do," Keith reasoned.

"No one does that so why would anyone expect it!?"

"Lance, calm down, dude," Hunk said in a quiet voice.

"Yeah, it's annoying but now we know," Pidge said calmly too.

Lance let go of Keith and stood up.

Keith gave Pidge and Hunk a thankful look while he kept asking himself why it was that Lance became the most upset when Keith wasn't even trying.

* * *

"Pidge, how many, erm, thingies are there on an inch again?" Hunk asked over the communication system as he fixed the ship from the outside for Coran. Pidge, Lance, Keith, and Shiro was for once allowed to just fly around in their lions. Shiro wanted to bond with his lion in the hangar instead but the other three flew away almost as soon as the words had left Allura's mouth. They weren't allowed to completely fly around as they wanted to as they had to stay close to Hunk, but it still allowed them to do something in the lions that wasn't repairs or fighting for their lives.

"3.4," Pidge answered.

"Okay, so normally I would need 18 inches. So that's-"

"61.2," Keith answered before Hunk could finish his sentence.

"No, Keith, it's…" Pidge hesitated. "It's correct."

"Why wouldn't it be?" Keith asked. He hadn't tried to sound stuck-up or arrogant but could hear he had before Lance snorting at him.

"Keith, what's the square root of 112?" Pidge asked. Keith was confused why though.

"I don't know, Pidge, 10.6?" Keith answered. "Why are you asking me this?"

"Pidge, he just found a calculator or made Hunk built him one," Lance huffed.

"I did not built one," Hunk informed the others. "But I'm flattered you have that much confidence in me."

"I'm just good at math. It's no big deal," Keith said grumpily because of the skepticism from Lance and the annoying curiosity from Pidge.

"Did you study math before you came to the Garrison, Keith?" Pidge asked.

"No." Keith didn't know how he could have studied it before the Garrison since he hadn't even been to high school when he started there.

"But you must have really liked math class."

"I'm good at mental calculation." Keith corrected his earlier statement about his math abilities. "I didn't like the part of math where we had to remember formulas and stuff."

"Finally something we can agree on," Lance mumbled to himself so Keith pretended he didn't hear and paid Lance no mind.

"I just like the actual math part."

"Formulas are math too!" Pidge defended and Hunk hummed in agreement with her.

"I just liked actually solving problems. It's not really math if you just have to remember that if one side of a triangle is 3 and another is 4 that the last one is 5."

"Is so! How else do you think they found that out the first time?" Hunk asked.

"By actually solving it, but after you have found out the first time it's meaningless and just annoying that it comes up 4 times a year. They could have asked for the capitol of Germany and it would be as little about math."

"Oh my God, can't you stop? I can tolerate Pidge's and Hunk's smart talk but if you all are going to keep talking about math, I'm going to dissolve."

"Don't dissolve, Lance, I'm just about to _solve_ this problem and I can't _solve_ the problem with you dis _solving_ before that."

"One more bad math pun and I'm telling Coran you're curious about the traditional Altean food and wants to try everything he can whip up."

"You wouldn't dare."

"Okay, I wouldn't. I can feel the others death glares through Blue but you will regret it if I hear one more math pun."

"Lance, can't you shut up already?" Keith asked not too kindly.

"Keith, you think you're so good with your multiplying but you're not, so you shut up!"

"I don't care who's good or bad at it."

Lance's lion flew closer to Keith. It was probably an attempt to be intimidating but Keith was highly unimpressed.

"Hey, Keith!" Pidge cut in before Lance could say one of his stupid comments. "Square root of 121."

"11," Keith answered before he even had a chance to wonder why he was humoring Pidge.

"You two practiced! I know you did!"

They hadn't. Keith still didn't know why he was playing along but he concluded that if it annoyed Lance, it was worth it.

"44 divided by… Um… 5," Pidge asked or commanded. Keith wasn't entirely sure.

He thought for half a tick before answering, "8.8."

"Wow, Keith you're either really good at this or really good at bullshitting."

Lance huffed annoyed in the background and Keith smirked freely since no one could see him.

"Come on, Pidge, that was weak, even Lance could get that one."

"Hey!" Lance protested but was ignored as Pidge, and eventually also Hunk, asked math questions to Keith and he answered as quickly as he could. Granted he came with some answers he knew was 100% accurate since he couldn't ponder too long about all the decimals when they asked about a difficult square roots, but he didn't think he answered any question wrong and Lance got more and more annoyed as time went on.

"You're right, Keith," Pidge agreed. Lance groaned for an impressive amount of time and unintentionally inspired the other three to come up with all the math jokes or just math talk they could think of. It didn't matter if it was advanced math or bad puns, everything was on the table in the name of making Lance sound like he was dying.

* * *

 _If someone got what anime the brown-haired girl was from, you get a virtual cookie._


	4. Keith & Lance Tries Cultures

_I was asked on both here and AO3 if this was finished. The answer is no and I have no idea when it would be finished because I just write on this every time I can think of something to write about. It's very difficult since every chapter is about 4 scenes._

* * *

They were all guarding their Earth belongings with great vigor. Of course, most of their belongings were just the clothes on their backs when they had left the atmosphere but they had a bit more than just that. Keith had his dagger, Pidge had her computer, and Lance had brought nail care and pictures in his pockets. That vain bastard.

It had been so long since they had seen Earth that just looking at Lance's pictures were more than enough to entertain everyone in the group. Allura and Coran joined for a while but lost interest before long and left the paladins alone in the lounge.

"Hey, Lance, what's that on your arm?" Pidge asked as she looked closely at one of the pictures.

"Hm?" Lance hummed and looked over to the picture in Pidge's hand. "Oh, that's my tattoo."

"You have a tattoo?" Pidge asked while Shiro simply sent Lance a raised eyebrow and slightly widened eyes.

Lance took a second look at the picture and blushed when he saw how proud he looked as he pointed at his naked bicep decorated with a black, Korean sign.

"How have I not noticed that before?" Pidge asked herself but still loud enough for everyone to hear.

"It was just a temporary tattoo, okay?" Lance asked and refused to meet anyone's eyes.

"You got multiple pictures of yourself with a temporary tattoo?" Pidge deadpanned while Hunk tried to keep his suppressed laughter secret from Lance.

"Yeah, okay! It's silly. Ha ha. But maybe I'll get it for real one day," Lance said defensively.

Keith stretched so he could take a look at the picture. Lance was wearing a wife beater and a snapback and looked like a huge douchebag. His only saving grace was the huge smile on his lips that made him look more like a little kid than a fuckboy.

"I don't think you should do that," Keith told Lance quietly.

"And why now? It means 'strong' or 'powerful' and that's pretty much me!" Lance retorted.

Maybe the lines and two circles actually meant that and maybe not. Keith knew as little Korean as the average American did but he could have some fun with this.

"It does describe you well, but it doesn't mean that at all," Keith responded calmly. Maybe too calmly but Keith had never claimed that he was the best liar in the Universe but he hoped he was a good enough one to fool Lance once again.

"Sure." Lance rolled his eyes before continuing, "and what does it mean then?"

"It means," Keith hesitated for a moment to think of what to say but looked at the picture while doing it in the hope that the others would just think he was reading the symbols again. Well, Shiro wouldn't think so as he knew how bad Keith was at every Asian language and he couldn't even read one bit of Japanese even though he knew some words of _that_.

"It means," Keith started again when too much time had already passed "Dumb American."

Keith leaned away from the picture to get further away from Lance. "So it describes you pretty well."

"What!" Lance exclaimed and looked at first Hunk then Pidge for help. When they just answered with a shrug each, he looked at Shiro and Keith was ready to be ratted out when he caught a glimpse of Lance's teary, wide-eyed and all in all pathetic expression. Not to mention that Keith already knew that Shiro was a big, fat traitor.

"Is it true, Shiro?" Lance asked.

Shiro sent Keith a glance and Keith was ready to leave. He wasn't about to stay and see not only Shiro betraying him but probably also his whole operation of agitating Lance go up in flames.

"I wouldn't know, Lance. Keith," Shiro sent Keith another glance at that "is the one who knows Korean."

"It's Korean?" Lance asked and looked away in his confusion. Keith had to look away too before he killed Lance with a death glare.

"Yes, it is," Shiro confirmed slowly so everyone could understand. "And it seems to say you're a dumb American."

Keith looked back at Shiro and saw him looking completely calm everywhere except his eyes that showed how much he enjoyed watching Lance splutter in an attempt to defend himself and tell the others that he was in fact not a dumb American.

* * *

Keith found Lance in the lounge again the day after looking at the picture of the past Lance in his douche clothes and shit-eating smile. The current Lance however was looking every forlorn and Keith almost regretted lying to Lance about the meaning of the temporary tattoo. It probably didn't mean anything good but at least there was a chance and Lance would probably have lost interest in the tattoo by the time they returned to Earth. If they ever returned to Earth.

"I'm not even American," Lance mumbled.

"You're not?" Keith asked and Lance jumped at the sound of his voice.

Lance furrowed his eyebrows. It was puzzling to Keith, either he was or he wasn't.

"I kind of am and kind of am not," Lance settled on and just confused Keith even further.

"You're one of those illegal border jumpers or something?" Keith asked and realized his racist mistake before Lance had sent him a dry and unamused look.

" _No_ , Keith," Lance forced out between his clenched teeth. "Are you fresh off the boat?"

"No," Keith answered and almost wanted to pat his shoulder for only sounding sorry and not insulted.

"Well, then stop asking me stuff like that, you Texan chink!" Lance shouted and breathed heavily as he glared at Keith.

"Call me that one more time and you'll never say anything ever again," Keith promised Lance sternly and clenched his fists both to show Lance that he was serious and in an attempt to control himself. "And I'm not Chinese. Probably."

Lance deflated. "Okay, I'm sorry."

Keith searched Lance's face for any insincerity and gave him a curt nod when he found none.

* * *

Doing paladin work was dangerous no matter how reckless or cautious one was but Keith was sometimes just tempting fate. He was looking Death right in the eyes and mooning him. If Death ever found the roof of his house under a blanket of toilet paper, it would be from Keith. Used toilet paper after he had drunk a gallon of milk so his shit would be really runny and disgusting.

So watching Keith _laugh_ about it was agitating for everyone involved. Even the mice huffed and found refuge in Allura's long, white hair when she let it down. It wasn't really that Keith found the situation he had just come out of funny. Well, the adrenaline did make it somewhat enjoyable but it was mostly just pend up relief. It was just a shame no one else seemed to know it.

"Keith, that was really dangerous," Shiro scolded.

Keith was still laughing but he made a visible effort to calm himself down.

"Sorry, Shiro," he got out somewhat comprehensible. He let out a quick chuckle and finally got over his fit of laughter.

"I thought you knew better than that," Shiro said quietly. Keith flinched. It would have been far less effective if Shiro had shouted instead of sounding so disappointed and almost grieving.

"I'm sorry, okay?" Keith answered with a downturned mouth and furrowed eyebrow. He sighed when Shiro just kept staring at him and Keith continued, "But nothing happened."

"But something could have!" a voice yelled. Keith was looking at Shiro who still had his mouth shut and the voice didn't sound like Shiro's but he had expected Shiro to know telepathy before hearing Lance sound both furious and worried about something Keith had done.

Lance turned Keith halfway around with one hand on each of his shoulders and looked so much like he was about to give Keith a head butt that Keith closed his eyes for a second to prepare himself for the impact and only opened them in wonder when he wasn't hit with anything.

"What the fuck were you thinking!?" Lance yelled and shook Keith's entire body.

"Nothing!" Keith yelled back but with far less fire than Lance.

"Exactly! You never think about anything!" Lance was panting with anger. "Didn't it cross your mind that we like you far better alive than dead, you piece of shit? Or are you really that brainless that something like that would never occur to you?"

Keith kept looking blankly at Lance as he took in Lance's words. Was he telling Keith that he liked him alive? As in, he didn't dislike him? He sure tried to make Keith's life miserable a lot for him to like him one bit, but then again, Keith wasn't much better himself.

Lance exhaled loudly and said with wide eyes as he shook his head at Keith, "You're unbelievable, you know that?"

"I hate you so much," Lance continued and let Keith's shoulders go.

"Well fuck you too, Lance," Keith said and narrowed his eyes in both annoyance and in thought as he tried to figure out what Lance's deal was.

Lance turned to walk away from Keith and the others but stopped in his tracks. "If you ever do that again," he said and turned around before continuing with a firm finger pointed towards Keith, "I will kill you."

Keith found it smarter to not answer that. Killing him would kind of defeat the purpose but he got the message behind the threat.

* * *

The team had received some spices from a very grateful planet that had been saved by them just a day after the first Galra reached their planet.

Keith had been looking forward to dinner just as much as the rest of the castle had. Coran still wanted to make the food but the paladins, luckily, outvoted him. Allura had been more or less neutral. She probably liked Coran's traditional, Altean food better but she liked Hunk's food too and the absence of complains when it wasn't Coran cooking was a plus.

They sat at the table. Allura at the end of it and the rest of the team on one side of the table. Keith still didn't understand why no one was sitting on the other side of the table. It would make it a lot easier to hear everyone, but he wasn't bothered enough to say anything.

The food was brought in. It steamed and looked almost appetizing with its light brown color and meatloaf-like appearance. The glassy look of it didn't entirely agree with Keith's senses and it appealed much less to him when Hunk cut it and it looked far more squishy than before but most food since he left Earth didn't appeal to any senses so he couldn't very well be too picky if he didn't want to die of starvation.

Everyone got a plateful and Keith brought his spork down to take some of the gooey dinner when Lance came with a surprised yelp on Keith's right side and he stopped bringing the food to his mouth so he could look at Lance instead.

"Are you okay, man?" Hunk asked.

"No, no, I was just not expecting it to be so spicy," Lance assured his friend.

Hunk widened his eyes as he asked, "I didn't make it too spicy, did I?"

"What?" Lance looked properly at Hunk instead of focusing half of his attention on his abused tongue. "No, I'm Cuban. Maybe it would be too spicy if I was Keith."

Hunk looked past Lance to look at Keith with less worried but still slightly widened eyes. "Is it okay for you, Keith? I don't know how used you are to spicy food."

Keith was so close to ask Hunk how he could possibly know if it was too spicy for him before he had had a single bite when Lance started crying out before anyone else had a chance to say anything, but he didn't comment on Lance's unmanly squeak and answered Hunk, "I'm sure it's fine."

Pidge took a bite on Hunk's other side and breathed out heavily. Hunk turned around to look at her. Keith couldn't see Hunk's expression but he could guess how he looked based on how he sounded, "Pidge, are you okay?"

Pidge nodded jaggedly and made vaguely agreeing sounds.

Keith was about to just give up on trying the food when Lance put another sporkful into his mouth and breathed out heavy but not nearly as heavily as Pidge had and looked Keith right in the eyes as he showed that _he_ could eat the food. It was a challenge and Keith would rather die than let Lance win.

He looked down at his own spork to make sure there was still something on it, there was, and brought it back to his mouth. Keith hesitated for a second as he saw Pidge down a huge glass of milk they had gotten from Kaltenecker, but then Lance smiled smugly and Keith couldn't have that and brought the food into his mouth.

It _was_ really spicy, but if there was one thing Keith learned the 6 months he stayed with an Indian family with a love for spices, it was to ignore the pain and just continue eating and sometime along the way of staying with them, his taste buds died just enough for him to enjoy their food. His stomach had taken longer and Keith lost almost two stones after his mouth became used to the food but it too adapted itself eventually.

This food would have been spicy enough to make Mr. Khatri, his former foster father, laugh and tell his wife, "Ritsika, you've been far too liberal with the spices!". Or Mr. Khatri would probably say the specific spices since he had known it 99% of the time but Keith could never remember the names of all the spices he had tasted. However, this level of spiciness wouldn't be enough for them to deem it inedible.

Lance looked at Keith with disbelieving and impressed eyes when Keith simply lifted his eyebrows half a centimeter at the taste but otherwise didn't react.

"Spicy enough for you, Mullet?" Lance asked.

Keith had no idea what Lance wanted now. They had just figured out that they both could eat the food without too much fuss when they were prepared on it being hot.

"Like I said to Hunk," Hunk looked up at them at the sound of his name, "it's fine."

"I don't know," Lance said and sent Keith a cocky smile. Keith knew it had some kind of meaning from the way Hunk reacted but Keith didn't know exactly what it meant.

"You really don't have to," Hunk told them hurriedly.

"Don't you want some more flavor in it?" Lance asked and both looked and sounded innocent. Okay, Keith knew what Lance wanted now. He should just be the bigger man and make Shiro proud instead of letting Shiro's stare turn more and more irritated the longer Keith didn't answer Lance with a big no.

"Sure, do you want some more too?" Keith asked as innocently as a stripper that was late on rent and felt Shiro's intense stare burn holes in him from the seat next to him.

Lance's smile turned into something more alike the Cheshire Cat. "Oh, I just didn't want to take it all. It wouldn't be fair to you."

"Of course," Keith replied, as he looked at Lance stand up to fetch the spices from the kitchen.

"Keith, just admit it's too spicy for both of you," Shiro sighed.

"No, Shiro, don't ruin this for me!" Pidge protested. "There's no TV in space and watching the idiots burn their faces off is the next best thing."

"Fine," Shiro sighed dejectedly and bended his neck. Keith looked at him and saw Shiro trying to hide his amusement. He looked back at the others and wondered how he could be the only one not fooled by a poser like Shiro.

All such thoughts however was ruined by Lance walking into the room with a small, transparent bag filled with red spices and a bottle filled with purple liquid.

"What do you wanna try today?" he asked with a shit-eating grin.

"Whatever was in the food I guess," Keith shrugged.

Both Keith and Lance turned their eyes on Hunk who made an unsure sound in the back of his throat.

Allura sat up straighter. "You didn't put _both_ things in the food, did you?" she asked.

"Yes? It tasted fine separately so I just thought…" Hunk stopped talking and looked at her with a devastated expression. "I haven't poisoned them or anything, right?"

"No, no," Allura giggled but still pushed her bowl of food away from her. "They just… enhance each other's taste and I now understand why you reacted like Altean children."

They waited for her to say something else but after a few ticks Lance lost interest and shook both the bottle and the small bag. "You ready for some flavor?"

"Sure," Keith mumbled and looked warily at Lance's hands as they added a few crushed, dry leaves and a few drops from the bottle on both of their plates.

"No, guys, don't! That's too much," Hunk tried to stop them but Lance looked challengingly at Keith and sealed both their fates. Keith was not backing out now and Lance too had too much pride to back out without a fight.

They mixed their food and ruined the little firmness their food had had. It was now a darker shade of brown and Keith felt a flicker of doubt as he heard Allura shush Hunk and saw her amused stare in the corner of his eye, but he couldn't back out now and pretended nothing was wrong.

Lance and he brought their food to their mouths simultaneously and looked at each other to see any weaknesses in the other. It was so hot Keith thought his mouth would burn off. He would probably never taste anything again and his throat was sure to have a giant hole in it when dinner was over.

Keith felt the blood rush to his face and he knew his pale face didn't do anything to hide the blush but he still felt like he had the upper hand as Lance's eyes started to become glassy and a single tear ran down Lance's cheek before it was stopped his hand halfway down.

They swallowed and Keith barely succeeded in hiding how much his mouth burned. Fuck lactose intolerance, Keith would drink some milk to get rid of the burning sensation in a heartbeat.

"Is it too much for you?" Lance asked and somehow it both made it better and worse that Lance looked like he had just cried.

"No, it was pretty mild," Keith replied and hoped Lance wouldn't see though his bullshit.

"For sure," Lance answered and put a bit more from both the bag and the bottle on each lump of food. His hands shook as he did so but Keith didn't feel the need to comment on that.

They mixed and took another sporkful. Keith could still feel all the eyes in the room on them as they looked at each other with firm mouths and sharp stares. Both of them wanted to appear fearless and like they were just waiting on the other to collect his courage when the truth was that they both wished for the other to forfeit.

Keith brought his spork in front of his mouth and Keith closed his eyes and prepared himself to endure another mouthful of fire.

Keith heard someone's spork touch a bowl and was sure it was Lance taking another bite and not even Zarkon could prevent him from taking another sporkful of torture. He closed his eyes even tighter in concentration so he wouldn't spit the goo of fire out of his poor, abused mouth.

"Aww, come on!" Lance exclaimed loudly when Keith had put the brown goo in his mouth. "How can you keep going!?"

Lance threw his spork on the table and Keith realized Lance hadn't been taking another bite. He looked just past him and saw Pidge smile wickedly as she sat in front of a bowl with a spork in it. Keith cursed himself for not leaving the rest of them behind when he had saved Shiro on his hover bike back on Earth. They didn't deserve happiness with how they were treating him. Shiro sniggered on the other side of Keith and he corrected himself and concluded that everyone, beside himself, deserved to burn in hell. Even Coran for having great camaraderie with both Lance and Allura.

"Eating spicy food is _my thing_!" Lance scolded. "It's in my blood and you can't have it!" Lance looked far more devastated than Keith thought he was but it wasn't directly Lance's fault as the tears was at fault for most of it.

"He kind of already did, Lance," Hunk informed him.

"Hunk, you are supposed to be on my side, you traitor," Lance sulked before leaving the room to go to the kitchen.

"Bring some milk for Keith too," Hunk commanded and Keith decided Hunk didn't have to die. Shiro laid a hand on his shoulder and shook his head while tittering. Keith should have never told Shiro why he couldn't drink Shiro's milk chocolate when they had just met each other. It could have killed Keith in a storm of chocolate milk and it would have been far less painful than the eternal burn he was feeling now.

Shiro didn't let go when Keith tried to shake his hand off to get his own glass of milk. Instead, he tightened his grip and sniggered harder but hid it with tittering. Keith hoped Shiro would just skip laughing at him and kill him already. This kind of pain wasn't something he could survive anyway so what was a few minutes when he was in such pain?


	5. Gunman and the Robosexual

Keith sat inside Red and let his hand stroke the control panel.

"You're not a good kitty, Red," he said and waited a second before he continued in a lighter voice, "you're the _best_ kitty!"

Red didn't move but he could feel her happiness through their bond.

"Oh my fucking god," Lance exclaimed through the coms. "You're not seriously babytalking your lion, are you?"

Keith was not babytalking anyone. His voice had never gotten high-pitched enough for that and he had never asked Red of she wanted to make grumpy-dumpy Zarkon go bang-bang the next time they saw him. Well, not in those exact words at least.

"You don't know what you're talking about," Keith informed Lance as he stroked Red again.

"What that's noise? Are you _stroking_ your Lion?" Lance let out a loud laugh and Keith was about mute his helmet when he heard another noise.

"What's wrong?" Shiro asked as loud noise greeted Keith's and Lance's ears from Shiro putting his helmet on so he could hear what was happening and stop a fight before it began.

"Keith is-Keith is stroking it," Lance answered as he let out a small chuckle.

"She's still a she just like yours is!" Keith defended the lions' gender identities.

Shiro let out a distressed sound. "Both of you, just please don't. Just no to both of you." Keith could practically see Shiro shake his head and close his eyes tightly in disgust while he was holding the bridge of his nose in frustration. "You do what you want but clean up after yourselves and _please_ never tell me about your masturbation habits again."

"What?" both Keith and Lance yelled together.

"I'm just bonding with my lion, Shiro," Keith continued after a brief inhale.

"Keith, no, don't tell me that," Shiro told him nauseously.

"What?" Keith asked. "Red likes it, don't you girl?" Red of course didn't answer beyond sending warm feeling Keith's way.

"Stop it. I can already never look you in the eyes ever again."

"Because I'm bonding with my lion? Aren't we all supposed to do that?"

Keith could hear Shiro being on the edge of saying something more but was interrupted just a millisecond before he had the chance to say anything.

"Keith, he thinks you're a-a robosexual," Lance exclaimed. He would have rather just kept low until Keith and Shiro left so Lance could go unnoticed but he simply couldn't take them going in a circle anymore.

"He thinks I'm-that I'm…. With my lion?" Keith let out a pained noise of his own. "I don't even know how that would work. Oh, God, I have pictures of it now."

Allura had gotten the horrible idea that the team should train their worst fight related abilities. That entailed Pidge training her strength, as she was already surprisingly agile for someone sitting in front of a screen most of the day but as weak as one would expect, while Hunk was trying to become more agile, which Keith didn't know if it was possible or not for someone of Hunk's built. Lance and Keith was also training one of the other's strength. Lance was training his swordsman skills and Keith was trying to hit the targets with a training gun. It was going as good or bad as expected.

Shiro was just meditating which could seem like it was because he was perfect in every other aspect, he sort of was, but Keith secretly agreed with Allura that Shiro needed to have more inner peace.

Lance earned his first break an hour later, just after Pidge and Hunk had had their second, and of course he decided to use it on irritating Keith.

"Hey, Keith, have you even hit anything today?" Lance asked as soon as his break had lasted for over 2 seconds and he was sitting down against the wall.

"Of course I have," Keith answered with a frown. He had hit _some_ targets and one of the shots was even in the outer ring.

"Why don't you show me then?" Lance asked mockingly when it was clear that Keith was waiting for Lance to look another way while Keith tried to concentrate on aiming the weapon.

Keith once again knew that he should have been the bigger man and spared himself from the pain known as Lance, but he was simply too weak a man for such nonsense. He looked at his targets. There were two in front of him and small one with only enough room for one ring and a bullseye and a larger target under that one containing five rings and a bigger bullseye.

Keith really wished he could show Lance up with his newfound gun skills but they were still almost as bad as when he started so he settled with aiming towards the big bullseye on the nether target.

Keith aimed and took a deep breath. Lance was either getting impatient or he just wanted to distract Keith with all his fidgeting. Patience yields focus, Keith reminded himself just before he fired the gun and-.

"Hey, Lance, I hit bullseye!" Keith yelled in surprise. He would have been proud if he had so much as hit anything on the intended target, but hitting a whole other one may have looked cool but wasn't really praiseworthy.

"Yeah, Keith, that's great. You're a real sharpshooter," Lance answered oddly subdued and had a pained look on his face before he turned to face the opposite direction from everyone else.

Keith took a good look at Lance's slumped shoulders and whole demeanor and saw that he wasn't just frustrated this time but was instead genuinely sad. Keith didn't fully understand why he became sad about Keith hitting one target but it was enough to stop Keith from pretending it was on purpose before he had even began to do so. This had better not bite him in the ass. There was always a chance of being teased himself but at least there usually was a chance of amusement in the form of frustrating Lance.  
"Hey Lance!" Keith called but was only awarded a flicker of movement from Lance. "Want to see me fire again?"

"Why would I do that?" Lance asked monotonously.

Good question. If Lance wasn't looking like the world had just collapsed under him, Keith would have asked Lance in return why he felt the need to watch Keith shoot the first time.

"See if it was just beginner's luck?" It was a stupid reason but Keith hoped it was enough to convince Lance.

"Will you leave me alone if I watch you shoot again?" Keith almost snorted at Lance's answer. If someone was annoyingly persistent when he wanted to be, it was Lance, so he had no right to complain about Keith wanting something from him.

"Sure," Keith answered instead of what he really wanted to say.

"Fine," Lance sighed and turned around to look at Keith impatiently.

Keith readied the gun and he didn't know if he was actually going to make himself worse than he really was and risk Lance seeing through it or if he was going to try his best and risk being just good enough to not show Lance that he wasn't a master shooter or whatever Lance had called him. He had almost decided with making himself just a tad worse when Lance interrupted Keith's inner monologue about the pros and cons of either choice.

"Come on, Mullet, it's not that hard. Just shoot already!"

Okay, Lance could quiznaking cheer himself up Keith was going to shoot so great that everyone would be amazed. If they was looking at him while he was shooting of course…

Keith inhaled deeply and tried to hold the gun just as he did before to shoot the upper target's middle. The shot fired and hit the wall up and slightly to the left of the target.

"What! Why isn't it hitting where I want it to?" Keith asked mostly just himself

Lance snorted but a veil of melancholy fell over him. "Don't dumb yourself down for me, Keith. You're already proven that you're great at this too."

Keith had never dumbed himself down for anyone. Okay, he had not dumbed himself down for anyone today and decided to prove to himself that he could damn well hit the target if he wanted to.

Many shots fired in the general direction of the targets and Pidge and Hunk looked in wonder as Keith turned so red in anger that he resembled the red lion.

Lance let out a laugh when Keith's eyes became glassy in pure anger, which just made Keith even more furious.

"You really do stink!" Lance laughed.

"No, it's this piece of shit," Keith argued as he lifted the gun to show everyone the piece of shit.

"Oh, really?" Lance asked and Keith could hear the eyebrow being hoist as far up Lance's forehead as possible. "Can I try?"

Keith was so close to just shooting Lance but sadly it was a training gun and would only give him an uncomfortable but not permanently harmful electric shock.

Keith instead threw the piece of shit into Lance's hands who didn't even take a second to aim and hit bullseye on the nether target and then almost immediately hit bullseye on the upper target.

Keith was not amused when Lance and the rest snickered at his expression when he realized it wasn't the gun that sucked, it was just him.

The team was sitting in the lounge after a long day of training but with no fighting Galras. It had been a good day and Keith knew other people probably would have wished for more but for him the day had been perfect. On top of that, they all was together doing nothing. They never did that with Pidge and Hunk having one project after another, mostly Pidge on that front though, Coran maintaining the castle, Allura either strategizing with Shiro, when he wasn't training, or grieving in her few moments alone, and Lance doing god knows what and taking Pidge and Hunk with him as often as possible. Keith would admit he often busied himself with training, so it wasn't like he was blaming anyone, but he still found himself feeling warm and fuzzy as he looked at the others.

"This is nice," Pidge informed the others. The corners of Keith's mouth lifted slightly at those words.

"Yeah," Hunk replied. "It is."

Keith debated with himself if it would be too embarrassing or demanded to ask what was on his mind, but in the end agreed with himself that he didn't care. At least he was going to pretend he didn't while he asked anyway.

"Can we do this again some time?" He asked slightly shy but for the most part sounded like himself.

"Sure," Shiro answered with a raised eyebrow.

Keith felt his inners tighten a bit. Shiro wasn't taking how much he wanted this seriously and the others was sending him weird looks.

"Just… Can we agree to do this again next year?"

"Next year? Why are you hurting your little mullet with plans so far out in the future?" Lance asked. Keith wasn't entirely sure if he was trying to get a rise out of him or not, but Keith did his best to not take the bait just in case that was what Lance wanted.

"None of your business," Keith muttered.

"It's you who wants to spend time with me next year so I think it _is_ my business," Lance answered just snarky enough to irritate Keith but not enough to earn more than chastening looks from Shiro and Allura.

" _You_ can stay away," Keith muttered.

"And let you take all the others with you? Nope, no can do." Lance's eyebrows furrowed a bit and his mouth was tight. He actually looked offended at Keith's words.

"Why is it so important to you that we sit on a couch together a whole year from now?" Pidge asked with just a whiff of concern.

"I just want to have a good day again next year. What's wrong with that?" Keith asked with furrowed eyebrows of his own and his eyes were widened so he could look for the answers in Pidge more easily.

"Why do you want to wait a year? Maybe Earth years are shorter but it seems excessive to wait so long for bonding with the team," Allura asked and Keith turned his head so he could look into her blue and pink eyes.

"I just thought this was a good way to spend today," Keith mumbled and regretted having asked them in the first place. He should just have kept it shut and secretly hoped for a day like this one the following year. It wasn't even that important to spend today and the same day next year like this. He was too old for wishing for such sentimentalism anyway.

Shiro looked thoughtful. His eyes narrowed as they looked just past Keith's face, his thick eyebrows seemed to try to connect with both each other and his eyes, and his nostrils widened just a bit.

"What date is it?" He asked the whole room.

Pidge, Hunk and Lance looked at each other with raised eyebrows and widened eyes before they looked back at Shiro and shrugged.

Shiro sighed and looked at Keith. "Today isn't your birthday, is it?"

Keith huffed. He was just embarrassed now but tried to hide it by seeming more annoyed than he really was. "So what if it is?"

"It _is_ your birthday!?" Lance shouted so loudly that Keith's ears ringed. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"It's not a big deal," Keith tried to calm him down even though he had no idea why Lance was being so emotional about the matter. "Besides, it's not like we could have done anything different."

"We could have! We celebrated Hunk by making sure he didn't have to cook."

"Lance, I told you then too I would have rather just cooked myself. I like cooking _and_ I know how I like my food," Hunk reminded Lance but was ignored.

"So, you can't just keep this a secret just so you can make all of us feel guilty or whatever your plan was."

"I wasn't-" Keith said but was stopped by Lance's hand over his mouth.

"No, no, no, nope, I don't want to hear anything more from the likes of you," Lance told Keith.

Keith had stopped trying to find any meaning in Lance a long time ago but this was even weirder than usual. Did he care about Keith's stupid birthday and wanted to make it good? Was he angry that Keith had kept quiet about it? Did Lance feel excluded? No, not that one, even Lance was logical enough to see that the others didn't know either. Was Lance just taking any opportunity to tick Keith off?

Keith knew he wasn't innocent and sometimes had been on the edge, maybe even over it, of being mean to Lance before with how he tried to rile him up without it being obvious, but his heart still felt heavy at the thought of Lance using Keith's birthday as an excuse to be dramatic.

His birthday wasn't anything special but he had just wanted one where he was surrounded by people he loved that at the very least didn't mind him.

Keith took Lance's hand away from his mouth. To Keith's surprise, Lance just let him when he felt a hand on his wrist.

"Just forget I said anything. It's not a big deal," Keith requested as politely as he could through the embarrassment tightening his throat and the sorrow that kept adding weight to his heart.

"Not a big deal!? I hope you aren't thinking you can just drop a bomb on us like that without us reacting to it." Lance huffed a breath. "You sit there Keith and do not go anywhere near the…"

Lance looked thoughtful for a few seconds before standing up and pointing a finger at Keith.

"You are not to go anywhere out of this room!" Keith would have left the room and searched all the others out of pure spite any other day but something about the way Lance demanded it spiked his curiosity and a knowledge that he wouldn't regret listening to Lance this once.

Lance shook his head at Keith before turning to leave the room. He stopped halfway out of his before turning only his torso and neck, "Pidge, Hunk, are you coming?"

Hunk jumped out of the couch with a hold of Pidge's arm. She tried her best to look irritated but her smile was deceiving her.

"Everyone," Lance declared to the whole training deck. "I have obtained guns."

Everyone in the room sent him a disbelieving look. Shiro with a thick blanket of enervation surrounding his whole being, Pidge with a hint of annoyance, Hunk with just a hint of embarrassment that he was trying to hide like the friend he was, and Keith just plain out looked disbelieving at Lance.

"Hey! Didn't you hear me? Space gave me these guns. Look at them," Lance ordered and flexed his right arm.

No one answered. The only reaction was Pidge acting like she was trying to hide a mocking laugh over Lance's biceps but Keith knew that she was only doing so she could bring attention to her laughter without seeming outright rude. Granted, Lance's arms weren't the biggest in the Universe, Shiro's wasn't even that, but it was obvious that Lance had often trained as a member of Voltron.

"You're quiet, Keith. Are you jealous?" Lance asked as he switched what arm he was flexing.

No, Keith wasn't jealous. He had a lot of arm muscle too from running around with a giant sword. Not crazy much and the rest of him was about as lanky as Lance, but it at least didn't bring him visually under Lance's muscle mass. It would have been a disaster if Lance was both taller _and_ more muscular than Keith.

"No," Keith answered truthfully.

Lance raised both eyebrows in mock confusion but everyone knew it was just him preparing himself to rile Keith up.

"Really? You're sure you're not jealous that I have guns and you-" Lance looked Keith over in one swift movement before his eyes found Keith's again "-don't?"

Okay, Keith would have to make this convincing and widening his eyes and turned slightly slack mouthed. Keith got this, and Lance wouldn't suspect a damn thing. No one in the room would suspect anything.

"No, of course not," Keith answered innocently. "And don't you only have one gun?"

"Well, I _do_ have a great one of a kind gun too," Lance reassured everyone with a wink and a wide and quick hand gesture towards his nether regions. Lance in return received disgruntled looks and a few disgusted sounds from everyone safe for Keith who tried his best to seem oblivious.

"Of course, your bayard," Keith supplied and almost lost face. People couldn't tell him anymore that he wasn't without other talents than flying and swordfighting because feigning ignorance was _hard_ and he was really proud of himself for keeping the act up the few seconds it had been going so far.

"What? No that's not-"

"And I have a sword so I don't need a gun," Keith said and threw in a slight head tilt just to sell it. Lance had better start being amusing soon because Keith didn't think he could hold on much longer before laughing and blowing it all.

Lance went through a lot of facial expression. The first recognizable expression was amusement so strong that Keith was sure he have would burst out laughing at any moment and the next and last recognizable one that stayed for over a second was marked by some kind of patience that Keith didn't know Lance was capable of. It looked like something people only dug up when talking to small children and Keith felt weird having such a look directed in his direction.

"No, Keith, I mean-"Lance stopped himself and he let out two small bursts of air that sounded like a short and breathless laugh. "It doesn't matter."

Shit, Keith had made it too convincing. The plan failed and Lance was only looking at him oddly soft. Crap, here Keith thought he could have some fun but now everyone just thought he was really thick.


	6. The Serious Man and the Saucy Questions

Lance's occasional hobby of switching languages was pissing Keith off. Both because Lance talked plain old English most of the time and only "forgot" the language when talking to Keith. Even if Lance had constantly kept it up with everyone on the ship, Keith knew that bilingual people didn't work like that. Shiro didn't at least and Keith was almost sure he had known other bilingual people but funny thing, he couldn't know completely since they kept to one language at a time. Well, okay one of his old foster family's biological children had spoken a mixture with each other, but they only used it with each other and switched to English when talking to Keith and either English or their other language when talking to their parents. Keith couldn't even remember what language it had been, but he remembered how they had used it.

"¡Oh no, no comprendes que dico!" Lance almost screamed very dramatically with wide eyes and hands on his cheeks.

"Katsudon!" Keith yelled at Lance.

Shiro snorted at that word somewhere outside the room. It turned into a small laughter that slowly echoed fainter and fainter as Shiro moved farther away and Keith realized that although he had said a real Japanese word, or more like a Japanese dish, the word was also frequently used in that ice skating anime Shiro had started watching before he left for Kerberos. Okay, Keith had liked that show too and had almost not promised Shiro to not watch the last four episodes since Shiro had left Earth's atmosphere just a day after the eighth episode aired and Keith hadn't had the will to watch any of the episodes after Shiro went missing. Keith realized he finally had had a reason to return to Earth all along and he could find out who had won the Grand Prix final.

"Eres _tremendo punto," Lance muttered as his eyebrows furrowed in what Keith assumed was thoughtfulness about Keith's choice of word._ Keith could only hope that Lance hadn't watched that anime in the original language and if he had, that he couldn't remember what katsudon was but the thoughtful look stirred a nervous bubble of dread in his chest.

 _"Lance, what's your problem?" Keith asked harshly. He had had enough with this and it wasn't only because he couldn't think of any Japanese words to call Lance._

 _"No mucho," Lance shrugged. At least he had let go of the dramatics for now._

 _"Lance, I swear to God I'm gonna rip your throat out if you don't shut up soon," Keith warned Lance who didn't seem anything close to frightened to Keith's disappointment._

"Ay, tremendo paquete," Lance uttered in a dramatic stage whisper while he shook his outstretched hands at eye height.

Keith felt the heat run up into his cheeks and hoped he looked more fierce than anything else. It would be just his luck if Lance had as much of a death wish as Shiro and found his reddened cheeks _cute_!

"Stop speaking like that just because you know I can't understand you!" Keith knew deep down that it was his own fault for sinking to Lance's level the first time but that didn't stop the rest of him from blaming Lance. "I know what you're doing, Lance! You're think you're so much smarter than me but you're not! Spanish may be useful on Earth but it's not her where no one speaks it, so cut the crap and stop trying to act superior!"

Keith inhaled deeply while he wondered why he just had to be smart enough to know what Lance was doing but not smart enough to ignore him.

 _"Este tipo es insufrible," Lance seemed to mutter to himself. It was hard for Keith to know since he was only able to understand enough to know he was probably being called insufferable. Lance turned his eyes to Keith and yelled like he thought that would make Keith understand what he was saying, "¡Creo tu eres tremendo mangon, Keith, y lo_ _detesto!_ _¡Lo detesto, lo detest y n_ i siquiera sabes _!_ _"_

 _Lance looked at Keith with widened, blue eyes and Keith felt like Lance was looking deep into his soul. Keith got a glimpse of something right before Lance closed his eyes and only opened them when he was looking to his left. Was that tears? Holy crap, was Lance crying? No, no, Keith didn't know what to do._

 _Keith looked around the room but couldn't spot anyone else and after listening after footsteps or anyone else breathing, he realized they were all alone. Of all the times Keith needed Shiro to listen to his conversations like the boundless man no one believed him to be, Shiro choose this time to not listen in._

"Wh-what's wrong?" Keith said awkwardly and just for good measure added Lance's name even though it had been a too long pause for it to not turn at least four times more awkward, and it was meant to be comforting but Keith's light pats on Lance's back seemed more ridiculous than reassuring.

"I want to help," Keith told him honestly," What can I do to help?" Keith hoped this wasn't putting pressure on Lance or anything else bad. He had heard crying was healthy but he would rather avoid seeing Lance cry if he could help it. He felt so useless standing there asking Lance what he should do as if Lance wasn't the one being sad over… something.

"No lo sé," Lance whispered so quietly that if Keith hadn't been standing closer in order to deliver his endless pats, he wouldn't have been able to hear it.

The Spanish part confused him though. Had Lance forgotten English in his distress? Wait, did people do that? He'd heard people curse in other languages when they stumbled or hurt something so maybe the same thing was true for sadness? Or maybe Lance was just having a stroke. Either way, it was time for Keith to calm him down to the best of his abilities. Which wasn't very great and he was all alone with no knowledge if anyone would be there soon. Quiznak.

Okay, Keith decided, if Lance ever mocked him for his, he was defiantly killing him. Lance could cry and beg and Keith would show him no mercy.

"I… um. Yo?" Keith stopped in order to mentally go over how the seemingly simple sentence went and was taken aback when Lance turned to look at him with a curious gaze.

"Yo hablo, um, no espa-españolesh," Keith finally said but it sounded more like a question because of how uncertain he had said each syllable.

Keith waited for a reaction from Lance but was only met with silence and raised eyebrows. He wondered if he had somehow broken Lance when Lance get out a snort through his nose and abruptly went into a loud laughter. Now, Keith didn't wonder anymore, he knew that he had broken Lance and swore to never try to speak anything other than English ever again.

"You're really dumb sometimes, Keith. I don't why I-," Lance made a single shake with his head and then proceeded to look at Keith with shining eyes. Both from the unshed tears that still had to retreat and from his laughter. "Don't worry, I _know_ you can't speak Spanish."

"Hmf," Keith huffed and crossed his arms as he looked pointedly away from Lance.

* * *

"I wish we had more spices, sauces, anything really," Hunk complained when the spices ran out and as he tried to make something that would taste okay.

"Lance speaks salsa, isn't that saucy enough?" Keith asked and did his best not to look at Lance's disbelieving expression.

"Hijo de puta, Keith," Lance cursed at Keith. At least, Keith thought that was cursing.

"Sorry, I don't speak sauce."

Hunk sniggered to Lance's annoyance. "Hunk, you're supposed to be on my side!"

"Sorry, sorry."

"You're just going to let him pick on me and the Spanish language!?" Lance asked with outrage.

"Sorry, dude."

"My best friend have turned on me," Lance muttered a bit too loudly to make anyone believe Hunk wasn't supposed to hear it.

* * *

"Hey, Keith?" Lance asked one day as Keith was having a very serious conversation with Pidge about cryptids.

Keith turned his head and was met with the sight of Lance and Hunk standing side by side looking expectantly at him.

"Yes?" he asked to know what they wanted so he could get back into the conversation with Pidge.

"You have a knife, right?" Hunk asked.

Keith furrowed his eyebrows as he turned his gaze to Hunk. "Yes?" They all knew he carried it around with him everywhere. He sometimes even brought it on missions even though he had never had use of it when he had his bayard.

"Do you know the Knife Game Song?" Lance hurried out so fast that Keith needed a couple of seconds to separate the words from each other.

"Maybe, I don't know. Why?" Keith asked suspiciously. He hoped they didn't think he would lend his knife out because he liked Hunk way too much to tell him what was needed to be said if that was the case. Okay, Lance was okay too he supposed.

Pidge shoved Keith. "You know what they want."

Yeah, Keith supposed he did know. "And you want to see it too?"

"Sure if they're watching I can as well too," Pidge said but quickly changed her answer, "I really want to see if you're just walking around with a knife for nothing or if you can actually do something with it."

"Aww, but I wanted to do it," Lance complained.

"No," Keith answered shortly. "I'm not lending my knife out to anyone."

"Keith, you don't have to do it," Hunk assured when he saw that Keith had indirectly said yes already.

"I'm going to," Keith answered and pulled out his knife as he and the others relocated to the dining room so Keith had a table to sit at when chopping.

"I'm not going to sing," Keith said as he sat down.

"Okay, but get chopping," Lance said as he sat next to Keith and Pidge sat on the other side. Keith found it a little unnerving to have Hunk breath down his neck but he didn't want to comment on it.

It started out really slow and without a real rhythm so Keith started to hum the song to himself before Lance had the chance to say something annoying.

Lance was humming too before long and started to really sing it when it sped up.

"Oh, chop chop chop chop chop chop. I'm picking up the speed. And if I hit my fingers then my hand will start to bleed."

Lance turned to look at Hunk. "See it wasn't so bad."

Keith still wasn't looking at Hunk so he couldn't know but he guessed Hunk was nodding because Lance sent a smile back behind Keith and then turned back to Keith.

"You're up for doing it properly this time?" he asked.

It had been a nice minute but Keith still answered, "No."

"Chicken," Lance muttered.

Keith huffed and looked at his knife. It was light but still well balanced. The Knife Game Song had been fine and he guessed he could bask in the glory of controlling his knife a little longer.

"I'm going to do the The Knife Flip Song," Keith informed the others as he took off his right glove. He only had that one pair with him in space and cuts could heal but he gloves couldn't.

"That sounds really dangerous," Hunk protested.

"Do it," Pidge said with shinning eyes.

Keith took a deep breath and started on the song and ignored Lance's comment that of course the song had a country vibe.

By the second stanza, Hunk asked the others disturbed why they weren't trying to stop Keith when he was met with displease for even considering such a thing, he asked, "Aren't any of you concerned that he's throwing a knife to a song and singing about there being blood on his knife?"

"Hush, Hunk, he knows what he's doing," Pidge assured Hunk but Keith wasn't entirely sure her statement was true.

By the third stanza, Keith was actually afraid when he sang, "I bet you probably think that I'm afraid." But he didn't' show it and just continued singing and concentrating on not hurting himself. He hadn't so far and was very proud of himself

Fourth stanza however brought the concept of flipping his knife four times and he kept doing it just slightly wrong and therefore cut the palm of his hand.

"Keith, stop you're hurting yourself," Lance commanded.

"You're bleeding," Pidge added.

"You're right, Pidge," Keith said and stopped throwing his knife just one verse before the song would have been over.

"Oh, Pidge is right. I'm the one who said you're hurting yourself," Lance commented annoyed. Keith had to look away from Lance when he saw Lance's eyebrows go up and down as he spoke. His hand was hurting but he still couldn't stop himself from being just a little impressed with how animated that boy's eyebrows was.

Keith had according to Lance 100 cuts but in reality it was only 3 but they stung all the same even after a quick once over and treatment from Coran.

Walking away from the medical bay with the others following him for some reason, Keith absentminded threw his knife up in the air and caught it again.

"Stop doing that!" Lance shouted and almost caused Keith to lose his control over the knife and cut himself again.

"What?" Keith mumbled.

"You've just been treated. See that bandage? That's from you getting injured a minute ago!"

"What do you want?" Keith asked and didn't even try to disguise how tired he was of listening to Lance who had been a broken record from the moment Keith agreed to ask Coran to treat his hand until his hand was bandaged.

"I want you to not mince your hand." Lance sounded really disappointed and it would probably have worked if he hadn't been the one to start Keith's willingness to throw knives that day.

* * *

"How did you not go totally phyco and stuff with being by yourself in the middle of nowhere?" Lance asked rudely. "I mean, I would go crazy with not seeing anyone for over a _day_ and you didn't see a single soul for a _year_!"

Keith really didn't know how to answer that. Yes, he hadn't seen a lot to other people when he lived in the desert but did Lance really think Keith that could survive for a year without food or water or did he think that Keith somehow could harvest food from the rich, rich ground of the desert. He thought he had seen a cactus close to his shack but that was the only plantlife in walking distance. Not to mention that Keith clearly wouldn't have something that could move fast, say a hoverbike, and _not_ use it, so he clearly also got fuel for that somewhere.

"Or did you go crazy?" Lance asked with wide, interested eyes. "You did seem a bit loony in the end and I didn't even see you outside the school the weekends we where allowed to go. The only ones except you who stayed at the Garrison were the teachers."

Keith could tell Lance to shut up now, ignore him, or tell him like the responsible new adult he probably was by now that Keith simply didn't feel like going anywhere when Shiro, the first person he had dared being close to since his early childhood, had disappeared mysteriously on a space mission. Yeah, like that was going to happen.

"Of course, the teachers stayed. They cannot leave the building. They are of a part of the building, Lance, which is itself a living creature. Obviously."

Lance was looking satisfyingly terrified for Keith. Who knew that Welcome to Night Vale had not only been good for hours of entertainment but also eventually help him distress Lance?

"You're joking, right?" Lance asked even though it was clear he was trying to make it a statement.

"You know me Lance." Keith informed him before he asked, "When have I ever joked about anything?"

Good thing that Lance wasn't a mind reader because behind Keith's serious face was memories of just a few of the instances where Keith had been joking with Lance without him knowing.

* * *

Keith trained a lot. Hand-to-hand-combat, sword fighting or just regular cardio and strength training and he was good. He knew that he was and he knew that everyone else did too. It was a given to all of them and not even Shiro had been overly impressed with him in years. He was proud of Keith from time to time of course, but he was never surprised when Keith did just a little better than before.

Maybe the rest had been initially surprised with him but at least Pidge and Hunk had heard of him from Lance before they had met him, and Lance had seen Keith in at least the beginner classes before the class was properly divided into the one class of fighter pilots and the 2 or 3 classes of cargo pilots. It always depended on the demand and on how many had dropped out because of the pressure or had been told to leave because of a lack of skills. Keith had never been a cargo pilot and as much as he had liked calling Lance it when they rescued Shiro, he knew that it wasn't easy and most who got into the school didn't graduate.

It was his own fault that Lance didn't have anything good to say to him in the start, and that made Keith so much more surprised when Lance commented, "You're really good with a sword."

"Yeah," Keith replied bluntly. Not because he was a very self-absorbed person or trying to be rude, he was simply just realistic and knew the level of difficulty he could win when fighting the training robots meant that he was good.

"How did you get so good with a sword?" Lance continued while trying, and failing, to sound disinterested and if the question had just crossed his mind and that he hadn't walked down to the training deck just to ask Keith.

Maybe Keith could have used Lance's question to mess with him or even comment on how translucent Lance was being, he wasn't sure but it seemed like he could, but he was too surprised to think of anything else to say than a deadpanned, "What?"

"Your sword? How did you get so good?" Lance asked impatiently but still looked pointedly away while he forced his shoulders to relax in mock nonchalance.

"I practiced?" Keith replied slowly. He wasn't sure where Lance's bewilderment with his sword skills were coming from since everyone could become at least decent at something if they practiced enough.

Lance looked back with a tight mouth, prepared to send a sharp retort in Keith's direction but stopped himself from doing so when he was met with wide, confused eyes.

He was still annoyed through and answered with a tired and irritated tone of voice, "Yeah, I know" and then proceeded to mutter so quietly that Keith didn't catch all the word, "It's _all_ you're ever doing."

They both waited for the other to say anything for several ticks but just as Keith was about to ask what it exactly was Lance wanted to know, he was met with an explanation from Lance.

"I meant, how did you start off so good. The Garrison barely teach cadets how to use a gun, so you haven't learned it there." Lance's hands curled into fists and stubbornly stayed at a 90 degree to the floor as Lance leaned to close to Keith that he could feel his warm breath as he continued, "And I refuse to believe you're just born with the ability to use a sword like that!"

"I-" Keith started as he tried to find an answer but he hadn't really thought about it. Maybe he had convinced himself that his ability to use a sword came from him having his knife for so long, but that was a weak explanation that he couldn't even get himself to believe now that he thought about it.

Keith's cheeks gave a little twist as he remembered a possible reason. It was still a little strange and unlikely to be the only reason but it was the only one he could think of. It was only a small twist of his lips because just as soon as he remembered, he realized he could tell Lance without any danger of him telling anyone who would believe him. However, he couldn't very well let Lance see him with a smug expression.

"I liked Star Wars as a kid," Keith said truthfully.

"Yeah, so did I but I'm not even as good with a sword now as you were when we arrived," Lance interrupted and finally moved out of Keith's personal space.

"And I got this lightsaber when I was 7," Keith said carefully to make sure Lance heard every word but also quietly enough that he knew that no one was close enough to hear him say it.

"You're not serious, are you?" Lance asked with disbelieve that something so great was happening to him.

"I'm always serious, Lance," Keith answered and hoped there was no mischievousness was shining through his eyes. Only Lance would believe a lie like that but Keith was actually serious about the origin of his ability to fight with swords and plastic lightsabers. "I really liked to honor my Jedi skills."

"No way," Lance said and followed it up with, "I can't believe this." Keith had a strong belief that Lance could believe it, since his eyes was still shinning with excitement even brighter than the mirth trying to take over him.

Keith wondered if he should ask Lance not to tell anyone about this as a lesson for him to never tell anyone if he ever found out something about Keith. No, that would be no good since there was a chance Lance would actually honor that promise. Lance wasn't exactly the mysterious, secretive kind of guy but he could at times be nice-ish to Keith and maybe that was enough to not say anything if he was asked not to. Even if the secret was amusing and far from any painful.

"How long did you, um, train for?" Lance asked.

How long did he have that lightsaber? It was stolen at some point and broke in half when Keith finally found it again but he needed to dig deep into his memory to remember how old he had been.

"I-I lost my lightsaber when I was 10, I think," Keith said.

"Cool, cool," Lance answered with his wrists waving his hands and outstretched fingers up and down after both words.

"I'm going to train now," Keith said and hoped Lance would get the hint that this conversation as over. This would be fun soon but Keith neither wanted to share more details nor did he want to waste any more of his training time.

Keith walked by the lounge 10 minutes later when his curiosity got too bad and sniggered when he heard Lance trying to convince the other residents of the castle of what he had learnt about Keith. As he expected, no one believed Lance one bit and Keith had to force himself to turn away from the door before anyone would walk out and find him laughing over Lance's outrage at not being believed.

* * *

 _Keith's rambling about teachers being a part of the building is almost stolen completely from Welcome to Nightvale. 24:05-24:20 from the 7th podcast from Year Two also known as episode 34 and both from Rusty Cage (AKA the creator of the Knife Game Song)._

 _Translations:_

 _(Spanish) ¡Oh no, no comprendes que dico!= Oh no, you don't understand what I'm saying_  
 _(Japanese) Katsudon = a dish that's also called pork cutlet /_  
 _(Spanish) Eres tremendo punto = You're a giant weirdo (a person who is really weird and shady)br /_  
 _(Spanish) No mucho = Not much_  
 _(Spanish) Ay, tremendo paquete = So much drama - Normally a response when you are hearing about some heavy /_  
 _(Spanish) Este tipo es insufrible = This guy is insufferablebr /_  
 _(Spanish) ¡Creo tu eres tremendo mangon, Keith, y lo detesto! ¡Lo detesto, lo detest y ni siquiera sabes!= I think you're hot/smoking hot, Keith, and I hate it! I hate it, I hate it and you don't even know (it)!"br /_  
 _(Spanish) No lo sé = I don't knowbr /_  
 _(Spanish) (And yes, Keith puts the 'no' in the wrong spot and completely butchers the word 'español' because he really sucks at Spanish but I've written it correctly here) (Yo) no hablo español = I do not speak Spanish_

 _(Spanish) Hijo de puta = Son of (a) whorebr /_

 _I can't stress this enough. I've done a lot of research and Lance uses Cuban words and expressions where I've seen it fit, but I'm still a Danish teenager so if I'd made a mistake, please tell me!br /_  
 _Also, I don't think you can get so sad that you can't speak a language you're fluent in even if it's your second language. I at least can write in English no matter my mood and it only worsened when I'm tired but still understandable. On the other hand, that's just me so i don't really know..._

 _Other non-translation related news, I made a klance spin-off a some days ago called_ Lance Does Not Do Jealousy _. It's just over 1400 words but I hope it's a fun read._


	7. The Fashion Police and Apologies

"Wow, Keith, that crop-top-jacket-thing and fanny packs are horrible!" Lance told Keith one day.

Keith took only a splitsecond to find a reply, "That's a really mean thing to say about Hunk."

"What?" Lance asked before his eyes widened in a revelation. "No, not Hunk, your clothes are ridiculous. Hunk's is-Hunk's is awesome!"

Okay, Hunk's was awesome and in another style than Keith's but even Lance would have to agree that Keith and Hunk shared similar pieces of clothing. Keith was just glad that Hunk hadn't left in the Garrison uniform and left Keith forever ignorant to the fact that there was at least one other person who liked fanny packs, chopped jackets, or vests in Hunk's case, and fingerless gloves. Also known as the best kind of gloves.

"I'm going to tell Hunk how you talk about him," Keith told Lance and didn't feel any less satisfied despite feeling unbelievably childish.

"How about you don't?" Lance asked him rhetorically but Keith didn't pay him any mind, he just turned 180 degrees and left the room with long, confident steps.

"Don't walk out of that door!" Lance yelled after him but it only made Keith smile that much more.

Keith did end up telling Hunk, but only to make sure Hunk wouldn't hear it the first time because Lance was apologizing and causing Hunk to think Lance really was talking badly about him.

Keith may have his moments of rudeness but he was not heartless.

* * *

"Hey want to hear a joke?" Lance asked the whole room. Everyone but Hunk didn't even try to hide how little they cared and even Hunk seemed a little halfhearted as he insured Lance that he wanted to hear the joke.

Given, they were all tired after receiving a distress call near the end of group training and as smart as Lance was, there was only so many jokes Lance could think of and no way he could discover any new ones others had created.

"Aw, come on, listen to me!" Lance said in a whiny tone.

"Fine, what?" Pidge snapped. Keith looked at her with raised eyebrows and felt the corner of his lips rise when he saw how she huffed and crossed her arms. She looked as scary as a baby penguin.

"Have anything to say, _Keith?_ " Lance asked in an even snappier tone than Pidge had used.

"No, nothing," Keith mumbled. Not because he was insecure but because he was confused why Lance was attacking _him_ when it had been _Pidge_ who had snapped at him.

"You seem amused, so tell me, what is it?" Lance asked with crossed arms of his own. "Are you laughing at me?"

"No, I'm not laughing at you," Keith told him and furrowed his eyebrows. Sometimes he really didn't get Lance. "Can't you just tell your joke?" Keith groaned.

Lance took a breath. Keith had no doubt it was preparation to say something annoying and probably insulting but luckily Hunk interrupted.

"I really want to hear your joke."

Lance turned his eyes away from Keith and tilted his head so his nose was in the air but sniffed a simple, "Fine."

"Okay, _Hunk_ ," Lance said and did a big number out of only looking at Hunk. It was meant to anger the rest of the room but Keith and Pidge simply shared a knowing and tired look and Shiro did his best to seem too adult for this and not simply doing his best to not laugh like a teenager. Keith however knew better and he promised himself that if it looked like he would get in trouble for somehow upsetting Lance then he would bring Shiro down with him.

"A Mexican magician tells the audience he will disappear on the count of 3." Lance got into the role and stopped showing how miffed he was with Pidge and Keith so he could use his hands to empathize how dramatic he could be while telling the joke like some revolutionary epic. As if the dramatic voice he used wasn't enough as he continued the joke, "He says, uno, dos…"

"Poof!" Lance exclaimed so loudly that Keith did a little jump and could hear 3 more people reacting the same way to the shout.

Lance bended over and stage whispered but still made it sound like a real secret, "He disappeared without a tres."

The room was silent for a few long seconds and Lance stood himself upright looked around the room. Lance's last words didn't even have time to run another time through Keith's head before he snorted and let out a soft snigger that the rest followed in on.

Lance stood for a second as if unsure if the laughter was sincere but when Shiro also let out a snort, he smiled proudly. The joke wasn't really funny enough to warrant 4 people laughing so loudly at it did but they were all overtired and they had barely come back from another mission that could have been their last so just the act of laughing was enough to making them laugh a little harder.

* * *

"So, Keith," Lance said in a clearly not nonchalant way despite Lance's best intentions.

"Yes?" Keith answered. He didn't know if he wanted to truly know what Lance wanted from him but he couldn't very well not be at least somewhat polite with the limited amounts of people in the castle.

"Have you ever... dyed your hair?" He asked and Keith got horrible flashbacks of himself with all the colours of the rainbow and then some. Including the Altean mourning color when his red stripe faded into a more pink color. Being a teenager had been hard and looking back at those pictures had been even more so.

"No," Keith said and hoped he was more successful in faking nonchalance than Lance was.

"Are you sure?" Lance asked. He didn't sound teasing but Keith still found himself agitated. Mostly because he feared that Shiro had told the others something or even worse that he somehow had pictures of it. Somehow. Actually it would be really creepy if Shiro had any pictures of him since he had only been in Keith's shack for a night and he wasn't carrying anything when he crashed on Earth.

"Yes, I'm sure," Keith scowled. "Is there actually something you want or did you just want to ask stupid questions?"

Lance gave Keith a look as he debated whether he wanted to be offended or not. Lance exhaled and Keith didn't know if he was disappointed about Lance's decision or not. Keith was tired but at the same time there was nothing to give him energy like arguing with Lance.

"It's just your eyes," Lance said each word slowly like he was unsure about where he was going.

"Yes?" Keith wouldn't admit it to anyone but he was actually curious now.

"They're… purple."

"My eyes are purple?" Keith had seen his eyes as more of a dark gray but he could understand why Lance would see them as purple giving that they reflected purple very easily.

"Yes," Lance said uselessly.

Neither talked for a long moment but then Lance exclaimed, "Are you an albino!?"

" _What?_!" Keith asked with half-closed eyes and slightly furrowed eyebrows.

"You heard me!" Lance said with far more sass than anyone asking such stupid questions had a right to. 'Are you an albino?' what had Lance smoked to think Keith was one?

"I have black hair…" Keith said as if it was the only obvious answer. Which it was. Obvious.

"Hair dye," Lance said with lifted shoulders and a spread out hand a good hand length away from his face. Keith could practically taste the judgement rolling off of Lance and maybe Keith should have seen that 'evidence' coming with Lance asking about hair dye but Keith could hardly be blamed for not thinking Lance was stupid enough to jump to conclusions based on nothing.

"We're been here for months. Wouldn't I have roots by now?" Keith asked even though he knew the answer and it was yes, he would have had roots and they would have been very obvious because of the contrasting hair colors.

"Shiro has has winged eyeliner since we came." What was with Lance today and being stupid enough to ask Keith, a black-haired boy, if he was an albino all the while being not so stupid with counterarguments every time Keith had an argument?

"I'm not an albino," Keith sighed. It was short and to the chase. Now they could put this behind them and Lance could think about other stupid theories. Preferably some that didn't include Keith.

"Why do you have purple eyes then? Only albinos can have those unless-" A teasing smile that Keith did _not_ like grew on Lance's face. "you have colored contacts."

"I don't have contacts either." Lance took a step towards him but stopped when Keith gave a not entirely empty threat "touch my eye and I will touch yours with a knife."

"Claws in, kitty."

"Can't you annoy Hunk or Pidge?" Keith felt his face show some of his mental exhaustion. "You're embarrassing yourself and everyone else." Which Keith didn't realize didn't say a lot before the words had left him and he remembered they were alone.

Lance leaned forward with his writs on his hips and hands pocking out like small wings. "You're embarrassing yourself and everyone else," Lance repeated on a mocking voice. Keith was about to say or do something to show his dislike how being mocked when Lance straightened up and said as if he was actually a normal human being and not every meme Keith knew put together in a mix-and-match parody of a person, "But you're really pale, man, didn't you ever get any sun in that desert?"

"Didn't feel like going red and getting skin cancer," Keith said and didn't know why he even said that. The first bit was true, he burned very easily so he avoided the sun when he remembered it and the second reason was only to sound slightly condescending so he could hide how lame and vain he found his own answer.

"I guess I should have expected that from you with your whole-" Lance gestured to all of Keith with a hand that kept going up and widened eyes that followed said hand.

"At least you're not outright calling me a vampire," Keith said as a way of showing that there was some hope for Lance. It was buried deep but it was there all the same.

"Are you-"

"No!"

"Fine, fine, don't suck the life out of me." A blush grew until Lance was red from the neck up. "I mean-"

"What now?" Keith asked annoyed. Couldn't he just get a break? "I'm not going to suck you dry."

Lance sputtered and didn't even seem to be able to stop when Keith sent him two raised eyebrows and confused and slightly judging eyes.

* * *

The team was gathered in the dining room and Lance was sitting at the very end with Keith next to him.

"Keith, I need the-um- the," Lance fumbled with his words and furrowed his eyes as he looked away and snapped his fingers as if that would help him find the words.

He looked back at Keith. "You know the-," he said and made hand signs Keith didn't understand despite looking very closely at Lance's hands.

"Come on, Keith, help me a little here. You know the word the," Lance said in a pleading and annoyed voice before he started circling his right hand in as quick and wide circles as his wrist allowed.

"No," Keith answered truthfully. He really didn't know. He didn't even know if he was curious enough to put the energy into trying. Besides, Lance was a big boy and could get whatever he needed instead of sending Keith.

"The- this is so annoying. I know that I know the word but I've forgotten it in English," Lance sighed. Keith wasn't sure if Lance was just informing the team of his lack of words or if he wanted an answer from one of them.

"Just say it in Spanish," Hunk suggested. "Maybe we know the word."

Keith sent a look Shiro's way. He didn't get one back but he didn't need that to remember that he and Shiro was the only ones who knew that there was a good chance Shiro would know the word, even if it was above high school level.

Lance sighed deep and dramatically. "Fine, I need the azúcar." His shoulders were down in surrender as he said the Spanish word and Keith was ready to reach for the pinkish, artificially made sugar, it was the only thing on the table that sounded close to what Lance was saying, when Lance's shoulders went up again and his eyes widened in realization.

"Wait, of course," Lance exclaimed in a loud and disapproving voice and did an actual, real-life face palm.

"The quiznaking sugar, it's almost the exact same word and I forgot it. Give it to me," Lance demanded grumpily through his hand before he lifted it again and looked at Keith with a tired expression. Normally Keith would want at least some kind of politeness sent his way or else he would send nothing back but he let it slide this once and sent the sugar Lance's way.

He only received an irritated snort but he knew that it was just because Lance was angry or at least irritated at himself.

* * *

"Lance, you look really hot," Keith said after the team had finished another training session under the strict guidance, or more like constant criticism, of Allura.

Lance's face was already bright red under the tan but his ears seemed to redden at Keith's words. Maybe it was just the light that had prevented Keith from noticing it before.

"Really?" Lance asked and sounded _coy._

"Yes," Keith answered as curtly as ever. "You're sweating quite a bit."

"Oh," Lance let out as his eyebrows raised in an attempt to hide that his shoulders had fallen down.

Why did Lance seem so disappointed when Keith had just told him he was sweating? He acted like Keith had taken back a compliment or something.

Oh. _Oh_. That wasn't intended and Keith felt his own ears warm up and hoped that his hair could hide it. Just act like nothing, Keith told himself, if you act oblivious then this would be forgotten forever or at least until the unease from saying something so embarrassing was gone.

* * *

"You can't keep doing this," Shiro sighed.

"Why not? It's not hurting him." Keith hesitated for a moment before sending daggers with his eyes. "And you were just as into teasing Lance."

Shiro sighed again. "I know, but now I'm telling you to quit it before it hurts the team."

"Okay, I will stop." Keith probably wouldn't have ever admitted defeat if it had been anyone else but this was Shiro.

"And tell him the truth."

This time it was Keith sighing. "Fine, why not actually hurt him?"

Shiro patted Keith's shoulder twice and left the room. Keith stood there for a moment but then walked through the castle to look for Lance.

Finding him was actually surprisingly easy. Lance was looking up at the stars from one of the windows with giant glass windows. Looking at the stars was more of a night activity in Keith's option but the time of day didn't mean a lot in space.

"Lance, there's something I need to tell you," Keith said and rubbed his hands nervously and regretted letting Shiro convince him of anything and for looking places where there was a chance Lance was.

"Yeah?" Lance asked as if unsure if he should be ready for ridicule or be seriously concerned.

"Okay, so I've, I've been lying to you sometimes"

"Yeah?" Lance asked again and furrowed his eyebrows and bit his lip as he looked intensely at Keith.

"Not anything bad," Keith thought it over. "Okay probably bad but it depends on how you, you will take it, I guess."

Lance nodded to show he was listening but kept quiet so he was sure to not interrupt Keith.

"So, Shiro has talked to me and he says it's bad for me to use your gullibility against you."

Lance spread his fingers so close to Keith's face that he could feel his own breathing. "Are you going somewhere or just insulting me?" Lance asked and sounded too amused to be offended.

"I am, it's just that I do understand things," Keith said and cursed himself for not being better with words and for letting Shiro rope him into this.

"Okay." Lance stretched out the word and searched Keith's face for something more. "You understand things."

"No, I mean that sometimes you-you say things and I act like I don't understand." Keith looked away from Lance and felt how hot his face was. God, this was embarrassing.

"Keith, what are you talking about?" Lance asked with an even voice. Keith could see how Lance's shoulders were tensing out of the corner of his eyes.

Keith mumbled the words he could imagine Shiro using, "It's not nice that you have to explain your jokes all the time."

The tension left Lance again. "I don't mind that you don't get all my jokes. It's, erm, nice that there's something you're bad at. No, not bad just not excellent at, you know?" Lance said and his hesitation in the start of the small speech and how hard he was trying to appear open, made it quite clear that he was hiding something.

Keith looked back at Lance. Why couldn't Lance just accept this and go cry or yell about Keith being mean? Keith didn't like being yelled at and crying made him uncomfortable and nervous but it was more preferable than having to explain this.

"But I _do_ understand them." At least most of the time he did. "And Shiro said-"

" _What_ has Shiro told you?" Lance bit out and

"That I shouldn't lie to you?" Keith repeated but was unsure if it was the right answer. The way Lance had asked had sounded like it was a trick question and Keith had already told Lance only moments ago.

"Look, you're my rival," just hearing that word made Keith feel a little awkward since he hadn't heard it since the start of their paladin careers, "and even _I_ don't mind that socializing isn't your strong suit. So just tell Shiro that you don't understand all the social cues and that's just that."

Okay true, Keith wasn't nearly as charismatic as Lance or as diplomatic as Allura, or mostly levelheaded as Shiro or any of the other social things the others excelled at but he was not that oblivious.

"I know we're not, like, super close but if Shiro's making you feel stupid, you can tell me." Lance switched between what leg he stood on. "But only if you can't, I mean, don't want to say something to him yourself."

This was a really nice thing of Lance to say. He was still totally wrong both with believing that Keith was lying right now and that Shiro was in fact shaming him for being oblivious, but Keith still didn't know what to say.

"You shouldn't feel stupid," Lance mumbled and started to look even more uncomfortable than Keith felt.

"I'm saying that I'm _not_ stupid, Lance, I know when you imply stuff." Maybe, Lance really did have a point with Keith not being great at socializing. He wasn't exactly being very specific.

"I'm not saying you're stupid for not understanding everything, I'm just telling you that you can't convince me that you're smart enough to keep faking it up!" Lance's shoulders rose and fell as he breathed heavily and his nostrils moved with his in- and exhales.

"I am smart enough for that!" Keith defended himself. Both just pride but mostly because it was the truth.

"Okay, fine if that makes you happy," Lance spat out suddenly filled with all the anger he had gained and left behind during their conversation. Lance didn't even hesitate a single moment to make sure Keith _wouldn't_ be happy about words that Keith could believe was true if he was as oblivious as he had acted like he was. "But even you can see you're far too impulsive and impatient to do anything like that for more than a day."

Quiznak telling Lance. He could drown in the goo machine for all Keith cared. He was just a stupid quiznaking weblum. Oh yeah, and one more thing, Lance could fuck himself on his fucking gun and pull the trigger. Then his ass could explode and if Keith was lucky, Lance could turn into another kind of dick head

* * *

 _Sorry that it took me so long to update this but finding 3-7 scenarios for every chapter is **hard.**_


	8. The Aliens and The Bees

"Before all this happened," Lance started in a half-serious voice. "How did you think your life would be by now?"

"I'd be dead," Keith answered shortly.

"No, _Keith_ ," Lance extended the necessary time for saying his name by several seconds. "I meant before we became paladins!"

"I know," Keith said fully serious.

"Oh." Lance furrowed his eyebrows and then let them rise up as he widened his eyes. " _Oh_!"

Questions were burning in Lance's eyes but Keith pretended not to notice until Lance asked out loud. "Why?"

"I'm pretty reckless," Keith shrugged. It was really obvious to him why he thought he would die. "And I lived in the middle of the desert where no one could help me."

" _Keith_ , you can't say something like that" Lance scolded but Keith just shrugged again.

* * *

"Okay, Keith, I have used my genius and figured out a joke you can't destroy," Lance said abruptly as he entered the training deck.

Clearly, Lance was underestimate Keith's ability to ruin a joke and overestimate his own intelligence but that was a discussion for another day when Keith wouldn't be too curious about what Lance had to say.

"Um… okay…" Keith said awkwardly.

"Okay, get ready," Lance said and had his fingers spread to both his sides.

"Okay," Keith answered. He was ready. Lance could just throw in whatever he want.

Lance sent him a look and Keith realized he had done something bad but didn't understand what. "Just shut your quiznak for one second if you can't say anything else."

Keith was about to say 'okay' again but settled on just nodding.

"Okay, good," Lance said. "Knock, knock."

Keith continued staring at Lance.

Lance sighed. "You can talk now. So, knock, knock."

"Come in," Keith answered.

"No, _Keith_ , that's not what you say," Lance complained.

"Sorry?" Keith said and tilted his head as he looked at Lance who was dramatically letting his head fall and then bended his torso down until his chest touched his legs in an impressive and unintended display of flexibility.

"No, it's okay," Lance said and sounded like it wasn't okay.

"I'm going to go now," Keith said slowly when he had been staring at Lance for almost a minute and feeling very awkward.

* * *

"Time for team bonding!" Lance exclaimed as he entered the room.

The sudden amount of noise startled Keith but he was proud to say that no one noticed.

"I thought we had finished planned bonding activities already," Pidge grumbled but didn't protest beyond that.

The chosen bonding exercise was fine when they had gotten it started. It felt a little silly but it was enjoyable enough to sit in a circle and ask a question that everyone had to answer in a clockwise order from the person next to the asker and all the way back to said asker again. It was nothing deep nor anything really personal, just silly questions like ones favorite color or the one more serious question from Lance about ones silliest fear as a kid.

"Okay, favorite animal," Hunk ordered everyone to answer.

Everyone looked at Keith who was sitting next to Hunk. He hesitated as he knew the others would probably find his answer a little silly but gathered his courage when Hunk gave him a tiny nudge and an encouraging smile.

"Okay, I will tell you but if any of you laugh," Keith sent Lance and Pidge a firm look, "I'm going to end you," Keith said in an intimidating voice that he hoped would hold up even when he had answered the question.

"You are not going to end anyone, Keith," Shiro said but still turned his eyes towards Pidge and Lance, "Because no one is going to laugh at a team member."

The message was clear but didn't terrify the enough because Lance whispered loud enough for everyone to hear, "If anyone says they like turtles, I'm going to piss my pants" to Pidge and was earned a snigger.

"Do you want me to-," Hunk started when Keith didn't spoke up immediately but Hunk was interrupted as Keith told a sudden burst of nerve.

"I like hippos!" Keith burst out a lot louder than intended.

Lance snorted, "What?" His mouth was upturned so much that his eyes had to close halfway up but they were still open enough for Keith to see the disbelieve.

"Come on, Keith, just tell us your favorite animal," Pidge groaned.

"I like hippos, they're cool but look soft," Keith said. "And they don't kill for food."

"Okay…" Hunk said as he gave Keith a side-eyed look.

"They kill the most humans per year in Africa even though they're herbivores!" Keith kept going as if he was a little kid. Maybe in some ways he was because this was the first time he had felt comfortable enough to share any hippopotamus facts with anyone and hadn't gotten the childish way of explaining ones interests out of his system.

"And how did you discover your liking for hippos?" Pidge asked. Her eyebrows was furrowed and her mouth was tight and slightly downturned. He couldn't see if she was disbelieving or disturbed, both weren't good signs, but he still answered.

"I liked crocodiles and saw when on TV when a hippo came and one crocodile ran away and one was killed in cold blood."

Lance let out a weird and pitiful sound. A little like a whine but a lot shorter. Keith looked over at him and Lance was defiantly disturbed. His eyes were wide and he swallowed as Keith looked at him. Maybe Keith had been a little too excited about the memory about that episode on Animal Planet.

"I'm more of a dog person myself," Hunk told the team even though it was not his turn to share with the others but it did take the edge of the others after Keith had admitted to liking an herbivores mammal for the sole reason of it killing humans and crocodiles.

* * *

"Hey, babe, are you a beekeeper?" Lance asked a beautiful alien girl. She didn't have eyebrows but the way she blinked made Keith think she would have creased them if she had any.

"What?" She asked.

"Because beauty is really in the eye of the bee-holder," Lance continued as if he hadn't been interrupted.

"I don't understand, but thank you." She looked to the side for a moment before looking back at Lance. "I think."

"Always," Lance answered and winked.

"I'll go now," the alien girl said awkwardly right before she turned around and left in a brisk pace.

"You really need to think about your references," Keith mumbled.

Lance turned around and narrowed his eyes at the sight of Keith. "Well, it's a little hard to cater pick-up lines to alien species I've literally never even heard of before."

Keith shrugged. What Lance said was true but it didn't take away much from Keith's point.

"If you're so good, then you flirt with some alien," Lance muttered.

Keith blinked. This was a challenge and Keith loved challenges but at the same time… "I don't want to flirt with strange aliens." And to Keith it was simple as that.

* * *

"Paladins, we can't have another Lesravda episode so you'll do today's exercise blindfolded," Allura instructed the paladins.

"You can always blindfold me, Princess," Lance purred and gave Allura a crocked smile.

"Stop being gross for two seconds," Keith asked in a voice that left no room for any no's.

"You're gross," Lance gave back with the confidence of someone giving a great comeback but even that confidence couldn't fool anyone else in the room. Hunk looked supportive as always but didn't pipe up with a 'Good one, Lance' which truly showed the lack of quality of Lance's comeback.

"Can't we just start this already?" Keith asked Allura who nodded gratefully for not having to deal with Lance's comment.

"Hunk, can you tie Lance's blindfold?" she asked, probably to distance herself even further from Lance's comments, as she preferred to do if she wasn't in the mood of scolding while Lance was in the mood for flirting.

"Don't be like that, Princess. You can even strangle me with it if you want," Lance offered and held a lewd smile until Keith huffed annoyed and a fight between the two of them started. Lance would later insist that it was because Keith was a cockblocker and Keith would claim that it was because of Lance not taking the exercise seriously.

* * *

Team Voltron had saved another planet from destruction and for once it wasn't the Galra that was to blame. They had almost not even noticed the planet's plight and would never have known if they hadn't landed on the planet in search for supplies.

Many aliens were like humans in that they either fought together against a common enemy or fought against each other, and this planet had several countries fighting because of a recent king's death. The king's first child was out of wedlock or with another wife than the first wife of the king or something Keith wasn't sure about. Fact was that some thought of the firstborn child as the rightful successor and some thought of a later born child as the successor and it was quite literally ruining the planet because almost all the countries had picked a side when the two princes started the war. Politics of other planets wasn't usually a top priority for Voltron if it didn't affect the Universe as a whole but the planet had enough weaponry to destroy all life on it twice and none of them wanted to see a whole planet full of life go extinct.

Team Voltron didn't totally delete the war from people's minds. They could probably do it but that would have taken months if one was optimistic and a lifetime if one was pessimistic. The war was dulled and the half-brothers started talking and would hopefully find a solution themselves after Voltron left to continue trying to save the whole Universe.

"Hey," a voice said behind Keith.

Keith turned around and saw a humanoid alien standing behind him. All the aliens on this planet were blue but like humans, they came in many shades from blue so light that it was almost white and all the way to blue so dark that it was almost black. It really depended on the country.

The country they were currently on mostly had shades around azure and this alien was no different with skin maybe a bit darker than the average for his fellow citizens but looking like he belonged in the crowd.

The alien was also quite handsome with sharp features and long limps and Keith couldn't look away when he got a good look at him.

"Hello," Keith answered when he realized the alien had been waiting for him to say something and not just stare.

The alien didn't seem to mind Keith's awkwardness, maybe he even liked it, because he just smiled a wide smile and introduced himself. "I'm Ethin."

"Hello, Ethin," Keith said and almost didn't stop himself from waving and completely ruining the reputation of Voltron and himself. Keith was called stoic by many aliens they met but he was sure that everyone on _this_ planet could hear his heart beating as quickly as it did in any fight.

Ethin smiled. "Can I call you something other than the Red Paladin?"

Keith's eyes widened. "Yes, of course, I'm Keith," he hurried out almost quicker than his translator could keep up with.

"Hello, Keith," Ethin mimicked Keith's line when he had introduced himself. "You were really great out there."

"I didn't really do anything," Keith answered. It was true, he had barely done anything as most of this rescue had been talking the two warheads down, but it came out as meek and humble.

Ethin put a hand on Keith's shoulder and Keith's forgotten teenage heart made him give out a gasp.

"I'm sure that you're always amazing," Ethin complimented.

"Thank you," Keith said and actually kept his cool despite being painfully aware of the hand on his shoulder.

The hand started going up and down Keith's shoulder. Keith couldn't feel it through the armor but the sight and sound of blue skin running over hard metal gave him phantom feeling of it.

"Hey, Keith," Lance's voice interrupted them and an arm stretched itself around Keith's neck and touched both his shoulders as it turned him around and out of Ethin's grip. "What are you doing here being all social?"

"Talking," Keith answered curtly and looked back at Ethin.

"I can see that," Lance answered with wide eyes and a stiff smile that looked like it belonged to one of those haunted dolls Keith had seen horror movies about.

"Then why ask?" Keith asked. It sounded rhetorical but he was genuinely curious.

"Just making sure that my buddy Keith knew that he was being flirted with by a stranger."

Keith looked back at Ethin who was listening to everything and how had Lance led Keith so far away from the alien without Keith noticing beyond the first two steps?

"I know that," Keith muttered quietly. "I'm not totally oblivious."

"Sure you're not, buddy," Lance answered in a normal tone of voice and with just enough teasing that it took Keith almost too long to detect the sympathy before he had acted rashly.

Right, Lance thought he was an idiot and it was his own fault. Quiznak, he hated himself sometimes. Well, nothing to do about that now so he might as well just act cool with 'learning' that he was flirting and being flirted with.

Keith's hand found its way up to his helmet and he messed around with the language part until he had turned his portable translator off. "Let me go so I can flirt some more then," he demanded as soon as no aliens could understand him anymore.

Lance's eyebrows furrowed and his mouth turned down for a moment before a teasing look took over his face. It was really creepy how fast it happened and Keith almost didn't believe that there had been another expression.

"I thought you didn't want to flirt with some strange alien," Lance teased but luckily kept his voice quiet enough that there was a good chance that Ethin couldn't hear it but only watch Keith's and Lance's interaction with nervous conflict.

"Well, now I do," Keith grumbled and shook Lance's arm off him so he could walk towards the alien again.

Lance looked a little frantic but Keith wasn't concerned for long as Lance opened his mouth and Keith was reassured that he was still his dumb self. "Well hurry up hailing them in because we won't be visiting this planet again for a long time or maybe _ever_!"

Ethin said something Keith didn't understand and it took him embarrassingly long before he remembered that he had deactivated his translator and therefore didn't understand. It seemed to be an insult of some kind because Lance wasn't too happy despite it coming out friendly and the way he looked at Keith didn't seem the least bit hostile.

"What did he say?" Keith asked Lance.

Lance looked at Keith with one raised eyebrow before his eyes widened for a second as he also remembered Keith's self-made situation with the translator.

"Oh, nothing, let's just go to the castle," Lance suggested and Keith decided it must have been something really bad for Lance to not joke about it and say that the alien or Keith had said something embarrassing.

Keith waved a hand towards Ethin who took his hand out of the air. Keith was ready to attack but then saw that Ethin had taken it and pressed his lips to Keith's hand in a strangely humanlike way. Keith's cheeks reddened but he would put the blame on the heat if asked about it.

Keith's other hand was taken by Lance and Keith was led away from Ethin once more as he had no choice but trying to keep up with Lance's long, brisk steps.


	9. The Fun In The Sack and The

"I don't appreciate when you're during your… flirting with me, but I do both find it irking and admirable your will to try to find someone even when we're in the middle of war," Allura said in a surprisingly nice reaction to seeing Lance send a long look after a slim but still pleasantly curved alien girl.

"You know it, Princess," he said and sent both a wink and fingerguns in her direction.

Keith didn't know what was going though Allura's mind but it had to be a lot because she looked far more perplexed than he had ever seen her before.

"I'm not personally interested in children yet even if I did find another Altean man, so I'm very curious about why you are already looking for someone to reproduce with."

Lance choked on either air or spit. It didn't matter as the sound alone made Keith wrinkle his nose in disgust.

"Children? You're moving a little too quickly for me," Lance forced out between coughs.

That made Allura's face turn even _more_ perplexed. "If not for reproduction, then why are you so insistent on finding someone?"

Lance's shoulders and eyebrows rose as he pressed his lips together. "It's fun?" His shoulders and eyebrows fell again. His eyebrows in straight lines right over his eyes and his shoulders until they were only slightly higher than when he was relaxed. "What's wrong with looking for a hot alien?"

"Nothing I suppose." Allura didn't look like she was supposing anything through all her uncertainty about the current conversation. Keith would have said something either to take away both Lance's and Allura's obvious destress or just make them aware that there was at least one paladin watching but Keith was also really curious about how this would end.

Lance looked at Allura as she argued with herself mentally and only sounded slightly judgmental when she asked, "But what would you do with your 'hot alien'?"

"Have fun with them? Argue about stupid stuff? And kiss them a lot of course." Lance counted the things on his fingers before he let his hands fall and ended with a final statement about relationship, "A girl- or boyfriend is really just a friend you kiss and maybe have sex with."

"You want to find a partner to have sex with?" Allura sounded like it was the most illogical thing she had ever heard of and Keith got really curious about what Alteans did when they were in relationships. He had just assumed that they worked like humans' relationships did since Alteans looked mostly the part and Allura was very close to her father before she had to delete the AI. Even the little things he had heard about the society there had seemed like it could have been a human civilization in a mixture of the far future with amazing tech and in the distant past with ruling monarchy.

"No, not for that," Lance answered and furrowed his eyebrows. "And I wouldn't like do it right away or even ever if they don't want to." Lance hurried the last part out and his cheeks reddened.

"I thought you said you didn't want children?" Allura asked and titled her head to look at Lance from another angle.

"Sorry, I just thought you would have like space condoms or something so you could have fun without, you know, _babies_." Lance shrugged but even Keith could see that he was really embarrassed about the conversation. Which was saying a lot because Keith had heard Lance hint at liking really kinky sex more than once when he was tied to a tree or when a pretty alien girl once accidentally scratched him and he told her that he liked it rough too.

Allura got a look of horror and disgust. Keith almost said something only because he was so surprised to see her react like that to a pretty normal statement on romantic relationship. "You would have sex with someone _for fun_?"

"What's wrong about that?" Lance asked with a high pitched voice and the look and sound of offended defensiveness put Keith over the edge and he started to laugh loudly.

Lance and Allura didn't say anything at first, not that he would have heard them unless they talked loud enough to deafen his laughter, but Lance eventually stepped closer to Keith.

"What are you laughing at, Mullet?"

Keith tried to answer but just laughed harder. It shouldn't have been funny and if he could probably not tell anyone about this in a way that would make anyone understand why he found it this funny, but the Allura's disgust about sex for enjoyment and Lance's defensiveness about his wish for such a thing was a wonderfully amusing mixture.

"What do you know anyway? I bet you haven't even slept with anyone," Lance grumbled.

Keith's laughter died down a little but he kept it up so he didn't have to lie himself out of that statement because there was no way he was admitting to _Lance_ of all people that he was right and that Keith had in fact not slept or even did anything remotely sexual with anyone

* * *

"Hey, Keith, What's wrong?" Lance asked weirdly concerned for Keith. It wasn't like Keith had been great at hiding his negative emotions and it wasn't like Lance was a bad guy or anything, but Keith was always a little surprised every time Lance showed genuine concern for him.

"Nothing," Keith sighed. "It's stupid."

"Look, man, this is obviously bothering you. Haven't your mother ever told you that it's not stupid if it's bothering you?" Lance widened his eyes in shock. "Fuck, I didn't just say that!"

"You did."

"Aw, man, I'm so sorry I can't imagine not having my-," Lance stopped himself before he could go further. "No, forget that I just said that."

"It's okay, Lance," Keith assured him in a hoarse voice.

People always laid too much into the concept mothers. Sure, it must be nice to have one but Keith had never been genuinely bitter about others having one and he was rarely sad about it when he saw it in action. Only few lonely nights had he felt lonely because of his lack of permanent parents but mostly he just didn't know what to miss and he therefore didn't miss it.

"It's not, you're sad and I'm-," Lance shook his head. "What's wrong, buddy?"

"I said it was stupid," Keith told him and curled up his fists to help him keep his emotions in check. It really was stupid and Keith knew it. "And I don't want to hear your shit if I tell you."

"I won't pick on you, Keith," Lance said in a voice so full of sass that it was practically rolling it's non-existing eyes.

"Fine," Keith gave up. "Shiro said I would be banned from the training room for a day if I went up a level before he thought I was ready, and then Shiro followed though."

"It's not stupid," Lance told him and almost sounded like he meant it. "That sounds... annoying..."

"I know it's my own fault," Keith told him with eyebrows just as flat as his voice.

"No," Lance said in a slightly higher pitch than he usually talked with.

"I mean-" Lance furrowed his eyebrows as he looked for words to say that wouldn't put too much blame on Keith but he couldn't find any and instead sent a soft and very awkward smile.

"Lance, it's okay," Keith breathed out with a slight headache blooming quietly in his temples waiting to grow if Lance wouldn't cut the hurt and well-meaning puppy dog act out soon.

"I don't even know why you care this much," Keith admitted and didn't realize how harsh the words sounded before they had left his mouth. Oh well, no going back now.

"Of course I care, we're Voltron and we can't let Voltron be only three limbed, right?"

"Do you even like me, Lance?" Keith asked. It still sounded harsher than intended but he didn't know how to ask in a nicer way while still getting the same question out.

Lance just looked at Keith with his mouth in a thin line and wide eyes as if that expression was supposed to mean anything.

"Are you going to answer?" Keith asked impatiently because fuck it. Lance was a big boy and could take uncensored words. Keith was an equally big boy, if you excluded height, but couldn't take that Lance's only answer to Keith asking again was a frustrated sound originating from the top of his throat. If someone had a right to make frustrated noises, it would be Keith but he wasn't the one standing there making choking noises.

* * *

Pidge had been working on a dictionary that could automatically turn text from Altean to English but it had been a work in progress for a long time both because the little true free time any of them had was not exclusively used on this project but also because there was a lot of words to go through.

It was because of that that some of the other paladins at times offered to help and Pidge was always thankful even if it was just helping her for a few minutes.

Keith had been helping her for about 20 doboshes with writing down the long technical and often also Altean words she told him letter for letter when Hunk walked into the room.

"Hey, guys, I hope I'm not interrupting anything but I have time now if you still need my help with your lion, Pidge." Hunk smiled at them and just radiated friendliness and comfort. Hunk was the most anxious of all the paladins but he looked completely at ease now.

"That would be great, Hunk" Pidge turned around to look at Keith. "If it's okay with you of course, I've just had problems with the Green Lion for a while and I thought maybe Hunk would know what was wrong or how we could figure it out."

"It's fine," Keith told her truthfully. He would have been fine with going through more words but it was more than fine that he could do something more exciting now or even just typing some of the words in himself.

"I bet you can ask Lance to help you if you want to keep going," Hunk informed Keith but Keith just hummed unimpressed at the thought of Lance sitting down for possibly hours while they went through one Altean word after the other.

Keith sighed silently "I don't think that's-."

"Hey, Lance!" Hunk interrupted him by yelling somewhere behind him and the door. "Can you help Keith with Pidge's translation program?"

There were an answer and Keith recognized Lance's voice but he couldn't identify any of the words.

"It will be fine, he's already helped Pidge so he know the program," Hunk promised and Keith thought that maybe he should stop Hunk before he promised something Keith would have no way of doing.

"Fine!" Lance shouted loud enough for Keith to understand and less than a dobosh later they were alone with Lance in front of a tablet with a list of words Pidge had figured out and Keith in front of another tablet with the program that she had created. It had a simple layout with a box for writing the Altean words and another box to write the English ones and with a box for explanations further down the page.

"Okay, what word did you reach?" Lance asked casually as he laid on his stomach with one hand holding his head and the other laying close to the tablet and ready to scroll up and down.

Keith pressed 'back' on his screen and answered, "Heximite."

"Okay, cool," Lance mumbled and let his eyes search up and down the tablet as he looked for the word. It took a while but not as long as Keith thought it would since none of the words had been alphabetized.

"The next one's Ytoia Quintessence," Lance told him and had to sound out the first part of the word so much that Keith was sure he wouldn't have recognized the word even if he had known it. "It's Concentrated Quintessence."

Keith scrolled down under the translations and started writing in the box named 'explanations' by Pidge and wrote 'concentrated quetentance' before he stopped and scrolled up again. He would have to edit that part in a moment but he would rather do that than forget the explanation and having to ask again.

"And how do you spell that?" Keith asked.

"Well, Pidge have written it Y-T-O-I-A," Keith wrote the letters down as Lance said them, "and then just quintessence."

"And how do you spell quintessence?" Keith asked a little annoyed about having to ask but not overly so.

Lance sent him a furrowed-eyebrowed look with narrowed eyes. "Are you serious right now?"

"Yes?" Keith asked and tilted his head the side and felt how his hair tried to stay up against the wall his head moved against.

Lance looked down at the tablet on the floor in front of him before looking back up again. "Just spell it out."

Lance said it like it was the easiest thing in the world but it wasn't. Keith could see that he had spelled the word wrong but he didn't know how to spell it right and the only letters he felt like he had chosen correctly was 'qu' but that wasn't even close to good enough especially for an automatic system that needed the absolute correct spelling of the words.

"Just tell me the letters, Lance," Keith grumbled and he tried to keep his cool but Lance was annoying and Keith felt defensive and hurt. Keith did fine and it wasn't really any trouble to ask for the spelling of certain words if it wasn't for the fact that people somehow thought that he asked for fun and not because he genuinely couldn't spell the word. Keith had never met anyone who just asked how to spell something for fun and he was flabbergasted every time someone assumed that was what he was doing.

"It's literally spelled how it's said, Keith." Lance looked annoyed and Keith tried to find the strength to not lash out when it looked like Lance was about to roll his eyes. "Stop playing dumb."

Keith almost threw the tablet but contained himself until he had put it on the ground almost as carefully as he was supposed to. "I am not dumb!"

"I know, so stop pretending to be!" Lance spat back with just as much power.

"It's not funny, Lance," Keith told him with even more poison but with a much lower voice. He wanted to ask why Lance could even be this mean to him and why he found enjoyment in picking on Keith for something he was genuinely insecure about and couldn't change.

"If you didn't want to help, then you should have just said so instead of being a dick!" Keith had raised his voice again and loudly voiced a little more of his mind than he intended.

Lance smashed his hand on the floor next to the tablet loudly and pushed himself up into a sitting position so he and Keith was on the same level. "If I had known that you would panic over spelling one word then I wouldn't have. I've seen you write on the board at the Garrison and I know you can spell all kinds of long Latin words about spaceships and airplanes so sorry for not knowing that easier words is where you draw the line."

"Knowing the words amazingly enough happens when you read the assigned homework," Keith informed Lance with no wonder in his eyes as people usually had when they talked about amazing occurrences. "Even someone with dyslexia can learn that."

"Why are you-? Wait, you're dyslexic?" Lance moved his head back and almost looked like he had a double chin.

"Yeah?" Keith answered and looked at Lance with big eyes as he thought about how stupid Lance had to be to not get that concept.

" _You're_ dyslexic?"

"Yeah," Keith said with slightly more fire.

"You literally corrected the guide to the simulator because they had forgotten a silent 'h'." Lance told Keith disbelievingly and Keith was so close to just throwing something in Lance's head. It wasn't like there could be any damage if his brain got smashed around a bit.

"I can remember the spelling of words just fine, Lance." Keith sent Lance a tired and annoyed look. "Just because I can't voice out quintessence doesn't mean I'm a fucking moron or have no memory."

"Isn't the words supposed to like, I don't know, swim around?" Lance's hands flew around as his fingers moved around in a weird mixture between the movements of a corny magician and someone demonstrating the want to tickle someone.

"Do we really need to talk about this now?" Keith asked but didn't even give Lance any time to answer before he hid most of his face in his palm. "Fine. _Yes,_ it's like that for some but not me. Middle of words disappear and I can't voice words out. There, happy? Will you spell quintessence for me now so we can at least finish _one_ word before Pidge and Hunk comes back?"

"Okay, sure, yeah, we'll do that," Lance mumbled and brought the tablet to his face again. "But like, did you just know or did you have to take a test and stuff?"

" _Yes_ , I took several tests, and will you shut about this now or do I have to do this alone?"

"Sorry, sorry, I'm just surprised."

"Be that in silence."

* * *

Keith watched Lance trying to convince Shiro to put on a brown jacket he had found in an alien market. Shiro didn't seem too eager but their clothing was bound to tear or get worn down eventually so they might as well have more than their uniform and one outfit before that happened. Even if the jacket did look very similar to the one Lance had been wearing when the Blue Lion flew them to space. There was some differences but besides the new one having two nuances of brown and looking like it was made of some kind of skin instead of fleece or whatever Lance's brownish, green jacket was made of, there wasn't a lot of differences.

Eventually Shiro did put it on and Keith's eyes widened and he made a choked noise because suddenly everything about him and Shiro made sense. Painfully much suddenly fell into place like an equation that had been missing just one variable but now Keith knew everything he needed to solve it. Keith suddenly wished that he had failed math.

Lance and Shiro looked towards him and he put a hand over his mouth.

"Are you okay, Keith?" Shiro asked fatherly and Keith's breath was suddenly stuck in his throat.

Hell to the no. This was not happening.

"The jacket's not that bad, Mullet," Lance sneered but he too seemed like he knew this was about more than Shiro's outfit.

Keith turned around and put his hands in his hair.

No, no, no, no, _no!_

Keith started to walk away but Lance closed the distance between them and moved in front of Keith before Keith had moved much farther away.

"What's your deal now?" Lance asked.

"Nothing," Keith mumbled and refused to look at Shiro to see if he too was coming over.

"You like him or something?" Lance scoffed.

Keith's eyebrows furrowed and he looked up at Lance with slightly narrowed eyes. "What are you talking about? Of course I like Shiro."

"I knew it," Lance commented. Keith had expected Lance to be unable to say such a sentence without shouting and acting like he had won the lottery but it was just a quiet comment under his breath.

"Don't you like Shiro?" Keith asked and tilted his head to the side as if seeing him from another angle would help him understand Lance better.

"What, no?" Lance's eyes went from narrowed to wide and his eyebrows rose. "I mean I like him as a friend? But not like-like him."

Keith felt how his face paled as nausea painted the inside of his throat a disgusting green. "And you thought I did?"

The inner teenager in Keith let out a single 'ew' at the thought of _that_.

"Okay, so you don't," Lance stated with acceptance of Keith's lack of romantic interest in Shiro. "What's your deal with the jacket then? I know that it's not that bad and you can't really comment on fashion when you're an edge lord."

"No-it's just. I'm just-," Keith stumbled over his words intelligently as he tried to figure out an excuse. "I-he-um…"

Lance looked over Keith's shoulder. "If you don't want to tell me, then you can just tell space dad."

"He's coming over here?" Keith asked with wide eyes. Seeing Shiro was usually nice but Keith would need some time before he could face Shiro even without the jacket.

"Erh, in a moment or two," Lance answered and shrugged before turning his eyes back on Keith. "Wanna tell me or wait until Shiro comes?"

Keith collected all his strengths and looked back at Shiro over his shoulder. At how he couldn't get the jacket properly on while he was wearing his Paladin Suit but it was almost certain that it would fit him perfectly when he was only in his normal clothes.

Keith looked back at Lance's curious and impatient eyes.

"He looks just like my dad with it," Keith whispered.

Okay, Keith admitted to himself, Shiro didn't look _exactly_ like Keith's father but the only major differences were his hair, his skin color and Shiro had a big scar over his nose where his father had a smaller one splitting one of his eyebrows in two. The resemblance was uncanny now that Keith had opened his eyes to it.

Lance's eyebrows furrowed as he looked at Keith and did so even further when he glanced at Shiro. He didn't seem to understand Keith exactly but nodded and walked back to Shiro who was taking the jacket off soon after.

Keith thought that Lance had simply told Shiro what Keith had told him but there was no concern nor sympathy pulling Shiro down.

Keith gave up the notion of Lance telling on him completely when they went back to the castle and Shiro only asked him once if he was okay, but Keith had been analyzing Shiro's every move for hours at that point so Keith couldn't very well blame Lance for that one.

It made Keith happy and warm to think that Lance would consider his emotions both about the jacket and about telling Shiro even if he didn't understand the reason for Keith's emotions.

Maybe he even felt a little giddier than he thought he would because of any developing friendships but Keith was too relieved that Shiro wouldn't know that Keith basically saw him as his dad to care about the bubbly feeling in his stomach.


End file.
